Valerie Hotchkiss

  • Azariah S. Root Director of Libraries
  • Professor of English and Book Studies

Areas of Study

Offices

Education

  • MA, MPhil, PhD, Yale University
  • MLS, Southern Connecticut State University
  • BA, University of Cincinnati and University of Tübingen

Biography

Valerie Hotchkiss serves as the Azariah S. Root Director of Oberlin College Libraries. She has directed university and special collections libraries at SMU, the University of Illinois, and Vanderbilt University, always championing engagement, as well as serious collection building, access to resources, and teaching with primary sources. Hotchkiss has raised well over $25 million for libraries over her nearly three-decade career. She earned her BA in classics at the University of Cincinnati with study at the University of Tübingen. In addition to the MLS, she holds a PhD from Yale University in medieval studies.

Hotchkiss also holds the title of Professor of English and Book Studies and publishes in the areas of cultural history, religion, women’s studies, and the history of books and printing. Her books include: Clothes Make the Man: Female Transvestism in Medieval Europe (Taylor & Francis, 1996/2012), English in Print from Caxton to Shakespeare to Milton (U of Illinois Press, 2008), The 1862 Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation: A Facsimile Edition with Michael Burlingame (U of Illinois Press, 2014), The Reformation of the Bible / The Bible of the Reformation with Fred Robinson (Yale Press, 1996), and Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, a 4-volume work she coauthored with Jaroslav Pelikan (Yale University Press 2003).

  • history of books and printing
  • medieval cultural history
  • women’s studies
  • special collections librarianship

  • Women in Print: Primary Source E-books by Women series. Editor in chief. 3 Volumes, 2015-2016. http://womeninprint.press.illinois.edu/.
  • “O Put me in thy books! 400 Years of. Shakespeare in Fiction. Editor and contributor to exhibition at the University of Illinois, Shakespeare’s Globe, the Elizabethan Club at Yale, and Durham University, 2016. https://www.library.illinois.edu/rbx/shakespeare400/
    • The Emancipation Proclamation: A Facsimile Edition. (University of Illinois Press, 2014)
    • Miracle within a Miracle: Johannes Reuchlin and the Jewish Book Controversy. With David Price. (RBML Illinois, 2012)
  • English in Print from Caxton to Shakespeare to Milton. With Fred Robinson. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/18531
  • Orthodoxy and Western Culture: Essays in Honor of the 80th Birthday of Jaroslav Pelikan, edited by Valerie Hotchkiss and Patrick Henry, authored two essays, pp 11-27 and 185-231. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Press, 2005.
  • Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition. 4 volumes. With Jaroslav Pelikan. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
  • Clothes Make the Man: Female Cross Dressing in Medieval Europe. New York: Garland Press, 1996; reissued by Routledge in 1999 and, later, Taylor & Francis, 2012.
  • The Reformation of the Bible / The Bible of the Reformation. With Jaroslav Pelikan and David Price. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

  • Visiting Scholar at Magdalen College, Library, Oxford, June 2019.
  • Cowinner of Yale Alumni Association, Excellence Award event, 2014 and 2016.
  • Distinguished Alumna Award, University of Cincinnati, McMicken College of Arts & Sciences, April 2013.
  • Andrew Turyn Professorship. Five-year Chair for Distinguished Faculty in the Library, University of Illinois, 2011–2016.
  • Honored for achievements in collection development by establishment of The Valerie Hotchkiss Reformation Collection at Southern Methodist University, 2005.
  • “Outstanding Academic Title of 2003” by Choice Magazine and by the Association of American Publishers for Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition (4-volumes, Yale University Press, 2003).

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