Public Writing
Princeton Department of English Community
This page collects recent public-facing writing by English Department alumni, faculty and current students (undergraduate and graduate) that addresses urgent contemporary topics, including the pandemic, the national reckoning with racism, the environment, and the role of arts in times of crisis.
D. Vance Smith
Professor of English
"Africa Writes Back: European ideas of African illiteracy are persistent, prejudiced and, as the story of Libyc script shows, entirely wrong". Aeon, June 17, 2021
Meredith Martin, Associate Professor of English, Princeton University
Virginia Jackson, UCI Endowed Chair in Rhetoric, University of California, Irvine
"The Poetry of the Future", Avidly (a channel of the los angeles review of books), January 29, 2021
Anne Cheng
Professor of English
"What This Wave of Anti-Asian Violence Reveals About America", New York Times, February 21, 2021
Rob Nixon
Thomas A. and Currie C. Barron Family Professor in Humanities and the Environment. Professor of English and the Princeton Environmental Institute
"Defending Tomorrow Today," Edge Effects, August 6th, 2020
“From Restraining Orders to Assassinations, the Dangerous Work of Saving the Monarchs,” Boston Review July 29th, 2020
Adrienne Brown, Ph.D. ’11
Associate Professor, The University of Chicago, Department of English, Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality
“Seeing Race in a Pandemic,” Foreign Policy, July 1st, 2020
Monica Huerta
Assistant Professor, Department of English
“Anti-Racism and the Problem of the Soul,” Los Angeles Review of Books June 24th, 2020
Joshua Bennett, Ph.D. ‘16
Mellon Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College
“Dad Poem” (Ultrasound #2)
Poem-a-Day on June 24th, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets
Autumn Womack
Assistant Professor, Department of English and African American Studies
“Can You Be Black and Listen to This,” Los Angeles Review of Books, June 1st 2020
Briallen Hopper, Ph.D. ‘09
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Queens CUNY
“Sirenland,” The Yale Review
Ingrid Norton, Ph.D. candidate
“Plague Memory,” The Point, March 22nd, 2020
Jeff Dolven
Professor, Department of English
“The Worst Returns to Laughter,” Cabinet Magazine, March 24th, 2020
Lauren Collins, ’02
“Reinventing Grief in an Era of Enforced Isolation,” The New Yorker, May 11th, 2020
Joani Etskovitz, ‘17
“Making and Measuring Education at Home: From Maria Edgeworth to the Kid Interrupting Your Attempt to Reach These Words,” Los Angeles Review of Books, May 6th, 2020
Adin Walker, ‘16