Distributed May 9, 2003
For Immediate Release

News Service Contact: Mary Jo Curtis



John Carter Brown Library Medal awarded to José Amor y Vázquez

José Amor y Vásquez, professor emeritus of Hispanic studies, has received the John Carter Brown Library medal for his service as an advisor, author, editor, translator and long-time supporter of the library. The medal was presented during a ceremony on Friday, May 9, 2003, at the library.


PROVIDENCE, R.I. — José Amor y Vásquez, professor emeritus of Hispanic studies, has received the John Carter Brown Library medal for his service as an advisor, author, editor, translator and long-time supporter of the library. The medal was presented during a ceremony on Friday, May 9, 2003.

The Board of Governors of the library established the medal in 1995 in anticipation of the 150th anniversary of the founding of the John Carter Brown collection in 1846. The board awards the medal on an occasional basis to recognize distinguished service to the library or to one of the fields represented in its collection.

Pepe

José Amor y Vásquez
The Board of Governors of the John Carter Brown Library has presented the John Carter Brown Library Medal to José Amor y Vásquez. “Pepe” Amor, who has been associated with the library and with Brown for more than 50 years, is only the third recipient of that honor.

“No single person has been more helpfully and continuously engaged with the JCB in more varied ways for a longer period of time than Professor Amor,” said T. Kimball Brooker, who presented the medal to Amor on behalf of the Board of Governors during Friday’s ceremony at the library. “He is an advisor, an author, an editor, a translator, a host to numerous visitors, a liaison to Brown faculty, a volunteer, a donor and virtually a member of the staff.”

Amor is a scholar with a lengthy record of contributions to the field of colonial Latin American studies. He began his education in Spain, where he was born, and later continued in Cuba; he received his Ph.D. from Brown in 1957 and has been associated with the University for more than 50 years. Amor is one of the founders of Brown’s Center for Latin American Studies, and he is the author or editor of several books, including El Tapaboca, which was published by the John Carter Brown Library in 2000.

Amor has been a member of the Brown University Faculty Liaison Committee to the John Carter Brown Library since the panel was created in 1982; he has been its chairman since 1995 and, as such, sits as an ex officio member of the Board of Governors. Several years ago he established the endowed José Amor y Vázquez Fund, designating it “for programs and projects at the library relating to Spanish and Spanish-American subjects, including fellowships, lectures, acquisitions, publications and cataloguing.”

“In the past 18 years, most John Carter Brown Library publications that contain any material related to Spanish culture have been vetted by Professor Amor,” said Norman Fiering, the director of the library.

The medal presented to Amor was crafted in bronze and sculpted by Rhode Island artist Alba Corrado. It had been awarded only twice: in 1996 to the late British historian David Beers Quinn and in 1999 to Felipe Fernández-Armesto, an historian in Britain.

The John Carter Brown Library is an independently administered and funded center for advanced research in history and the humanities, located at Brown University since 1901. The library houses one of the world’s outstanding collections of books, maps and manuscripts relating to the colonial period of the Americas from 1492 to ca. 1825.

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