Each spring, the Fleet Library recognizes the hard work and dedication of its graduating student employees by purchasing a book in their name for the library's collections. Below are the titles selected by our undergraduate and graduate student workers from the class of 2025, accompanied by the inspiration behind their selections. We thank them for all their hard work!
KIMBERLY DUCK | Graphic Design, MFA
"It challenges the conventions of graphic design through a feminist, collective, and interdisciplinary lens, offering students and researchers a critical, diverse, and experimental approach to the field."
Glossary of Undisciplined Design by Anja Kaiser (Editor) and Rebecca Stephany (Editor)ISBN: 9783959054461
Publication Date: 2025
A feminist unpacking of the field of graphic design, offering "undisciplinarity" as the solution to a discipline that has historically featured a multitude of dogmatic rules, discriminatory structures and a particularly one-sided canon. With around 55 contributions by 20 international designers, activists, educators and theorists, the handbook progresses alphabetically, exploring role models, tools and methods of dissent within a colorful and graphic handbook, featuring qualities akin to those of an artist's zine.
LUISA MARIA HEINDL | Graphic Design, MFA
"This book offers a valuable counter-narrative to conventional graphic design histories, emphasizing the life of logos beyond professional control. It foregrounds the public’s role in transforming visual identity."
LOGO in Real Life by Michele GalluzzoISBN: 9788894740141
Publication Date: 2024
What happens to logos when they encounter the real world? When they leave corporate identity manuals, branding agencies, designer portfolios, brand guidelines? In this book, Michele Galluzzo tries to answer these questions, and tells a ‘different’ story: the one that pits graphic design professionals against the public that consumes, uses and re-appropriates communication. Logo IRL is a counter-narrative in which graphic design icons become ‘open works’, and the public participates in the evolution of the life of brands and graphic design in a broader sense.
STANLEY HOPE | Painting, BFA
"Le Guin is one of my favorite authors and has given me much to think about in terms of how I can imagine fantasy worlds beyond a typical tale of superficial flashy violence."
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le GuinISBN: 9780547722023
Publication Date: 2012
The first novel of Ursula K. Le Guin's must-read Books of Earthsea. Ged was the greatest sorcerer in Earthsea, but in his youth he was the reckless Sparrowhawk. In his hunger for power and knowledge, he tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tumultuous tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance. With stories as perennial and universally beloved as The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings--but also unlike anything but themselves--Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea novels are some of the most acclaimed and awarded works in literature.
ORION JAIME | Ceramics, BFA
"I chose this photography book of the Southwest landscape as I find it not only a collection of beautiful photos, but because I draw inspiration from the organic formations, colors, and textures."
Canyon Wilderness of the Southwest by Jon OrtnerISBN: 9781599621319
Publication Date: 2016
Canyon Wilderness of the Southwest presents more than 200 photographs accompanied by quotations from authors, travelers, and nature enthusiasts. Featuring the most extraordinary collection of multicolored landforms found anywhere on earth, this remarkable assemblage of geologic diversity and spectacular beauty attracts more than ten million visitors annually. Jon Ortner's photographs reflect the power and stunning beauty of these incomparable monuments, presenting a wonderland of colored stone.
NAOMI KERN | Architecture, BFA
"It's beautifully written and I think it's an especially useful book in thinking about one's political role in the world as an artist or writer."
Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer's Activism by Alice WalkerISBN: 9780704345485
Publication Date: 1997
In her superb collection of essays, Alice Walker expresses her profound belief in our ability to protect justice and truth. She shares her advice for young women growing up, her letters and speeches of protest and support. Race, culture, feminism, raising a daughter, writing and living - here is an extraordinary picture of an author and activist as she interacts with the world, encouraging us to recognize that, with commitment, strength, endurance and compassion, anything we love can be saved.
HANNA KNOWLES | Painting, BFA
"First and continuous; favorite book; special crucial important "
Existentialism and Human Emotions by Jean Paul SartreISBN: 9780806509020
Publication Date: 1987
Sartre’s Existentialism and Human Emotions is a stirring defense of existentialist thought, which argues that “existence precedes essence.” While attacks on existentialism claim that the philosophy leads to a kind of nihilistic gloom, Sartre contends that instead existentialism is the only path toward giving man meaning. Sartre turns the typical nihilistic definition of existentialism on its head in this optimistic take on his best-known theory.
YUANHUI LI | Illustration, MFA
"This is a new published book by Brecht Evens, who is a life-time-practice illustrator. This is a graphic novel but a special one, every page in the book is beautiful. I bought one myself, but I think the school library should have one as well."
Le Roi Méduse by Brecht EvensISBN: 9782330185138
Publication Date: 2024
Arthur grows up seeing the world through his father's eyes—a hostile and violent world, threatened by a vast conspiracy, where everything must be distrusted: school, neighbors, the media, friends... Locked away in their house transformed into a citadel, father and son train for the great battle to come against the forces of evil. When his father mysteriously disappears, ten-year-old Arthur must find him alone.
NICOLE HSUNCHU NEDEFF | Industrial Design, BFA
"This is the book my grandfather and his friend self-published together documenting their escape from Bulgaria. I don't think any other library in the world has this book on its shelves."
Journey to Freedom by Ned Nedeff, Robert PopovISBN: 9781521987797
Publication Date: 2017
This story is about three good friends - Ned, Jim and Robert and events that took place 50 years ago. Ned, Jim and Robert have totally different personalities, backgrounds, dreams and ambitions, but they were united in their common goal - freedom. The journey takes us from Bulgaria through Yugoslavia and Italy to New York and California.
NOVEMBER STANLEY | Illustration, BFA
"I always found it ridiculous that the Fleet Library didn’t have a copy of this amazing book. The Singing Bones is a masterful example of simplicity, texture, form, symbolism, and design in illustration. I hope you hear all of Tan’s unsaid words in these images."
The Singing Bones by Shaun TanISBN: 9780545946124
Publication Date: 2016
Wicked stepmothers, traitorous brothers, cunning foxes, lonely princesses: There is no mistaking the world of the Brothers Grimm and the beloved fairy tales that have captured generations of readers. Now internationally acclaimed artist Shaun Tan shows us the beautiful, terrifying, amusing, and downright peculiar heart of these tales as never before seen. With a foreword by Neil Gaiman and an introduction by renowned fairy-tale expert Jack Zipes, this stunning gallery of sculptural works will thrill and delight art lovers and fairy-tale aficionados alike.
JAMIE WANG | Illustration, CTC Concentration, BFA
"I love Alex Alice's fantastical watercolor renderings in a compelling narrative that blends two of my favorite genres I enjoy reading: sci-fi and historical fiction. If you're an avid fan of space, steampunk, and bande dessinées, I cannot recommend this book and series enough!"
Castle in the Stars: the Space Race of 1869 by Alex AliceISBN: 9781626724938
Publication Date: 2017
In search of the mysterious element known as aether, Claire Dulac flew her hot air balloon toward the edge of our stratosphere--and never returned. One year after her disappearance: a letter from an unknown sender who claims to have Claire's lost logbook. In Castle in the Stars, this lavishly illustrated graphic novel, Alex Alice delivers a historical fantasy adventure set in a world where man journeyed into space in 1869, not 1969.
JOANNA HERNANDEZ WRIGHT | Architecture, MFA
"A very valuable source I found during my thesis research that I think other students will enjoy."
Transparency by Daniel JutteISBN: 9780300237245
Publication Date: 2023
From ancient glass to Apple's corporate headquarters, this book is the first to probe how Western people have experienced, conceptualized, and evaluated transparency. Daniel Jütte argues that the experience of transparency has been inextricably linked to one element of Western architecture: the glass window. A seemingly "pure" material, glass has been endowed, throughout history, with political, social, and cultural meaning, in manifold and sometimes conflicting ways. At the same time, Jütte raises questions about the future of vitreous transparency--its costs in terms of visual privacy but also its ecological price tag in an age of accelerating climate change.