Three U.Va. graduate students will pursue bibliographical or textual projects this summer as the inaugural winners of Battestin Fellowships from the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia.

The fellowships, named in honor of Martin Battestin, emeritus professor of English in the College of Arts & Sciences, and his wife Ruthe, a literary scholar and member of the society’s council, will provide recipients $3,500 each to support their research in the University Library’s Albert & Shirley Small Special Collections Library.

The fellowships will support the budding scholars while making use of the many primary source materials available in the library, said Anne Ribble, the Bibliographical Society’s executive secretary.

Nora Benedict, a doctoral student studying Spanish literature in the Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, will work on “Text and Image in the Borges Collection.” The Albert & Shirley Small Special Collections Library holds one of the most extensive collections of the writings of the Argentine author Jorgé Luis Borges, some of which are illustrated with his drawings.

Taking advantage of one of the world’s leading collections of Tibetan literature, Natasha Mikles in the religious studies department will focus on “Illuminating the ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’: A Descriptive Bibliography of U.Va. Manuscript 14259 and Its Place in the Historical Production of Tibetan Books.”

The third winner, Zachary Stone, an English graduate student specializing in medieval literature, will delve into research on “William Lambarde, A.L. Hench and Early Modern Bibliography at the University of Virginia.”

The fellowship selection committee comprised English professor Michael Suarez, director of Rare Book School; G. Thomas Tanselle, president of the Bibliographical Society; and David Whitesell, curator in special collections at U.Va.

The Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, founded in 1947, exists to encourage and support the study of books as physical objects and has an international membership. It publishes the journal Studies in Bibliography and has an active program of publishing books in both printed and electronic form. It also sponsors a biennial student book-collecting contest.