Julia Verkholantsev, associate professor of Slavic languages and literatures, received the Early Slavic Studies Association Book Prize for The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome: The History of the Legend and Its Legacy, or, How the Translator of the Vulgate Became an Apostle of the Slavs. The book explores the history of the medieval belief that fourth-century church father and biblical translator St. Jerome was a Slav and the inventor of the Slavic (Glagolitic) alphabet and Roman Slavonic rite, and investigates this belief’s spread from Dalmatia to Bohemia and Poland. Now largely forgotten, this legend was used by political and religious leaders from Rome to Bohemia and beyond for nearly 500 years until it was debunked in the 18th century. Dr. Verkholantsev examines the belief within the wider context of European historical and theological thought and shows that its effects reached far beyond the Slavic world.