News Archive

2021 - 2022

Program for Community-Engaged Scholarship (ProCES)
Arts in the Invisible City Posted May 9, 2022 This team-taught course was led by D. Vance Smith, professor of English, and Nyssa Chow, an oral historian and lecturer in theater in the Lewis Center for the Arts and the Humanities Council. It was supported by the David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Project in the Humanities Council. Cross-listed in English, humanistic studies, theater and urban studies, the course is also part of the Program for Community-Engaged Scholarship (ProCES).
2022 Class Day Celebration Posted May 4, 2022

The Department of English at Princeton University warmly invites the Class of 2022, their parents, family, and friends to attend the

2022 Class Day Celebration

Monday, May 23, 2022  at 1:30 p.m. EDT 

McCosh Hall 50  with refreshments to follow in McCosh Courtyard

Prof. Anne Cheng's ENG 571: The Human Ornament visits Art Museum Study Room Study Room Posted May 4, 2022

“ENG 571: The Human Ornament,” which is interested in the confusion between persons and things, was able to go to the Art Museum’s off-site Study Room where they studied and were able to be in the same room with original artworks from contemporary artists such as Lorna Simpson, Hannah Wilke, Dennis Oppenheim, and Yeesookyung. Of particular interests to the class were these artists’ deployment of anthropomorphic objects, their highly mediated approaches to self-representation and embodiment. 

Prof. Josh Kotin's "Special Studies in Modernism: 1922" explore Princeton Library's Special Collections Posted May 4, 2022

Joshua Kotin, associate professor in the Department of English, offers his class, “Special Studies in Modernism: 1922,” a chance to explore James Joyce’s work as well as contemporary publications from T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and Claude McKay in consideration of their influence 100 years later. 

“This class presents a way to think about modernism and to reflect on the importance of that year to the development of cultural history, especially Anglophone literary history,” Kotin explained. 

Co Winners from left to right: Zachary Sahin '23, Cassy James '23, Right Top: Co-Runner-up Priyanka Aiyer '23 and Right Bottom: Co-Runner-up Sierra Stern '24
Four Undergraduates Awarded the A. Scott Berg Fellowship for Summer Study Posted April 27, 2022

Each year the Department of English’s Undergraduate faculty select from a pool of rising junior and senior concentrators to determine the winner of the A. Scott Berg Fellowship, a scholarship endowed by the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer A. Scott Berg `71 h.c. '03.

Esther Schor: 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship
Professor Esther Schor receives 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship Posted April 8, 2022

Congratulations to Professor Esther Schor, chair of the Humanities Council and the Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Professor of American Jewish Studies and Professor of English on receiving the 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of intellectual and cultural history.

Students and Faculty work with ink & movement: Col(LAB) 3:0 Self -Portraiture: Autobiography and its Discontents
Cameron Lee '22 "Inking Movements into Moments for Col(LAB) 3.0" Posted March 8, 2022

Senior concentrator, Cameron Lee '22, penned the article, Inking Movements into Moments for Col(LAB) 3.0, sharing her experience as a participant with the Col(LAB) 3.0: (Collective) Self-Portraiture: Autobiography and its Discontents led by two New York-based dance artists, Yin Mei, an internationally-renowned dancer and choreographer originally from China, and Dahlia/Dixon Li, an artist, writer, scholar, and Princeton English department alumna.

Leo Bersani
The Messy Humanity of Leo Bersani Posted March 8, 2022 Two friends and colleagues remember the late Leo Bersani.
Nobel Prize winner Maria Ressa '86 receives Woodrow Wilson Award on Alumni Day Posted February 21, 2022

Ressa, a member of the Class of 1986 who received her bachelor’s degree in English and a certificate in the program in theater and dance, received the Woodrow Wilson Award. This award was presented on Alumni Day, held on Saturday, Feb. 19, 2022.  

The Next Chapter 2022: Career Conversations with Princeton English Alumni Posted February 16, 2022

An English Alumni panel to share how majoring in English shaped their career experiences in theatre, tech, medicine, finance, marketing, publishing, and library science. Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 4:30 p.m. Learn more here.  

Conference poster: The Netherlands: Culture and Global History. 1500 - 1700
The Netherlands: Culture and Global History. 1500 - 1700 Posted February 4, 2022 An interdisciplinary conference exploring the place of the Netherlands and its culture in the later 16th and 17th centuries as it began to exert influence across the globe and as it acted as a distinctive conduit for the transmission of American, African and Asian elements back into Europe.
Honoring bell hooks:   Reflections on her pedagogical legacy
Assistant Professors Monica Huerta, Paul Nadal, and Autumn Womack speak on the legacy of bell hooks Posted February 1, 2022 An Inclusive Teaching at Princeton event: Honoring bell hooks: Reflections on her pedagogical legacy
Joshua Bennett, MLA Award
MLA's William Sanders Scarborough Prize awarded to PhD alum, Joshua Bennett Posted December 7, 2021

The Modern Language Association of America today announced it is awarding its twentieth annual William Sanders Scarborough Prize to Joshua Bennett, department alum and professor of English and creative writing at Dartmouth College, for his book Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and the End of Man, published by Harvard University Press.

Click here for further information.

Paul Nadal - American Literature Society Award
Assistant Professor Paul Nadal awarded the 1921 Prize for Best Essay in American Literature from the American Literature Society Posted December 1, 2021

The Advisory Council of the American Literature Society has awarded the 1921 Prize to Professor Paul Nadal for his essay, "Cold War Remittance Economy: US Creative Writing and the Importation of New Criticism into the Philippines,” in American Quarterly. The 1921 Prize is awarded annually for "the best article in any field of American literature."

Click here to read Professor Nadal's article.

Annual Report Banner
Department publishes 2020-2021 Annual Report Posted November 16, 2021

The department has published its 2020 - 2021 Annual Report.  Click the link to read the online publication: 

Department of English Annual Report 2020 - 2021

Marvelous Extinctions: Melville on Animal Suffering
Marvelous Extinctions: Melville on Animal Suffering Posted November 16, 2021

Branka Arsić: Class of 1932 Long-Term Visiting Fellow in the Humanities Council and Department of English and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University

Photo of Robbie Richardson
Indigenous Studies: A Conversation with Robbie Richardson Posted October 25, 2021

Robbie Richardson, a member of Pabineau First Nation (Mi’kmaw) in New Brunswick, Canada, and an assistant professor of English at Princeton University, specializes in 18th-century British and transatlantic literature and culture. His research into interactions between Indigenous and European cultures connects interests in Indigenous studies, art and material culture, the history of museums and collecting, and the literature of empire.

Maria Ressa '86 - English Major - Wins Nobel Peace Prize
Journalist and English Major, Maria Ressa '86, Awarded Nobel Peace Prize Posted October 12, 2021

The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, for their longstanding efforts to safeguard freedom of expression in the Philippines and Russia.

15th Annual Humanities Colloquium Panel
Scholars Delve Into “Humanities and Mobility” During 15th Annual Humanities Colloquium Posted October 1, 2021 “Humanities and Mobility" - Wendy Laura Belcher, João Biehl, Zahid Chaudhary, and Judith Hamera spoke at the second online Colloquium.
"Magical Habits" by Monica Huerta
New York Times names Magical Habits “striking debut" Posted August 26, 2021 Monica Huerta is Assistant Professor of English and American Studies at Princeton University. In Magical Habits, she draws on her experiences growing up in her family’s Mexican restaurants and her life as an academic to sketch out habits of living that allow us to consider what it means to live with history as we are caught up in it and how those histories bear on our capacities to make sense of our lives.

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