Inspired by Alice

By Bill Dotson on April 29, 2009 8:16 AM

USC School of Cinematic Arts graduate student Ghia Godfree won first prize for Alicia en Lotería Land, her inventive mash-up of Alice in Wonderland and the popular lotería card game.

Godfree accepted the award before an audience of more than 100 students, faculty, and library supporters who gathered in Doheny Memorial Library for the fifth annual Wonderland Award ceremony on April 21.

Godfree was inspired by the games and books she found for a friend raising a baby in a bilingual household.

“One of the first things I noticed in the library collections was how many translations of Alice there were, and how quickly they appeared after the book was first published,” she said. “So I became interested in the process and meaning of translation, as well as the way in which lotería seemed to have so many Carrollian characteristics.”

As Godfree explored the Cassady Lewis Carroll collection, she discovered Carroll’s letters to the real-life Alice Liddell, along with playing cards and the iconic illustrations by John Tenniel.

“All of this merged into one for me,” she said. “And I got the idea of writing a letter to Lewis Carroll as part of my entry.”

Emily Yu won second prize for a series of paintings that reimagined pieces by Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollack and Andy Warhol. Kelly Combs took third for “The Liddell Book of Letters,” an illustrated, hand-made primer of Carrollian thinking that can only be read using a mirror.

The other winners were Leah Sargent, who received the White Rabbit Prize for her short film Curious: My Wonderland; Keith Henkel, who won the Dormouse Prize for a one-of-a-kind collection of mammalian dresses; Kathryn Strong, who won a Special Recognition Award for a miniature book of poems Of Deep-Fried Chicken Wings….; and Kassandra Zuanich, who received a Special Recognition Award for her unique Web-based logic-puzzle game based on the Alice in Wonderland universe.

Linda Cassady, who founded the Wonderland Award in 2005, said, “The award is an effort to bring students into the library and encourage them to explore the collection and have some fun. This year’s submissions were the best in the history of the award.”

Catherine Quinlan, dean of the USC Libraries, said, “Linda’s creation is the perfect complement to the Cassady collection … a playful and ingenious invention worthy of Carroll himself. It has inspired our students’ interest in the collection and caused them to think about Lewis Carroll’s continuing relevance for us today.”

USC students submitted a record 57 entries for this year’s competition, more than the libraries received during the last two years combined. This year’s judges included Linda Cassady, professors Jim Kincaid and Meg Russett of the English department at USC College, repeat Wonderland winner and English doctoral candidate Jonathan Hamrick, and USC alums Jennifer and Suzanne Todd, who are producing Tim Burton’s upcoming film adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.

Kincaid, who has been a judge and award presenter since the contest’s inception, said, “The explosion of creative energy this year speaks to the power of the Cassady collection to inspire curiosity.”

The event was a culmination of a semester-long celebration of the Wonderland Award’s fifth anniversary, which included croquet games on the quads and Callooh! Callay! A Brillig Look at the USC Libraries Wonderland Award, a retrospective exhibition of previous Wonderland entries - as well as an oversized chess set - in Doheny Library.

The Wonderland Award is an annual multidisciplinary competition that encourages new scholarship and creative work related to Lewis Carroll and the materials in the G. Edward Cassady and Margaret Elizabeth Cassady Lewis Carroll Collection.

For more information about the Wonderland Award and the Cassady Collection, visit www.usc.edu/libraries/wonderland

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