News

Esther "Starry" Schor image
Schor named chair of the Humanities Council Posted August 26, 2021

Esther “Starry” Schor, the Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Professor of American Jewish Studies and professor of English, has been appointed chair of Princeton University’s Humanities Council. She is also director of the Program in Humanistic Studies and the Stewart Seminars in Religion and serves on the Executive Committee of the Program in Judaic Studies.

Silma Berrada - Co-winner: Wood Legacy Prize
Silma Berrada '22, named co-winner of the George B. Wood Legacy Junior Prize for the Class of 2022. Posted August 25, 2021 Senior concentrator, Silma Berrada, has been named co-winner of the George B. Wood Legacy Junior Prize for the Class of 2022. This prize is awarded annually to an undergraduate in the senior class in recognition of their exceptional academic achievement during their junior year at Princeton. Chair of the Department, Simon Gikandi shared, "We are delighted for the honor that you have brought to the English Department!"
Intersections Lecture Series announcement
Announcing the Intersections Lecture Series Posted August 24, 2021

The Intersections Lecture Series this year represents a department wide collaboration to bring to campus scholars whose work on race, difference, and social justice has remapped disciplinary boundaries and redefined how we think about the relationship between critical theory and social activism. 

Austen - Johnson / Tuite library talk
'30 Great Myths About Jane Austen' with Claudia Johnson and Clara Tuite (online) Posted June 21, 2021

Was Jane Austen the best-selling novelist of her time? Are all her novels romances? Did they depict the traditional world of the aristocracy? Is Austen’s writing easy to understand? Well into the 21st century, Jane Austen continues to be one of the most compelling novelists in all English literature. Authors Claudia L. Johnson and Clara Tuite joins us to discuss the accepted beliefs ― both true and untrue ―that have most influenced our readings of Austen. 

See further information here.

Gene Andrew Jarrett
Gene Andrew Jarrett, English Department alum, named Princeton's next Dean of the Faculty Posted May 27, 2021 Gene Andrew Jarrett, the Seryl Kushner Dean of the College of Arts and Science (CAS) and Professor of English at New York University, will become Princeton’s next dean of the faculty.
Graduate Student Prize Winners
Graduate Students Honored for Excellence in Teaching Awards Posted May 26, 2021 The Department of English celebrates the four graduate students honored for their significant contributions and exemplary teaching practices in the face of the extraordinary circumstances faced in this academic environment.
Honors Class of 2021
Department of English Names Ten 2021 Senior Concentrators to Honors Posted May 26, 2021

This year’s 2021 cohort finds ten student concentrators as recipients of honors designation for their work within the Department of English.  Each department determines honors on the basis of the grades received by the student in departmental studies (including department requirements and cognates, junior independent work, the senior thesis, and the senior departmental examination.)

2021 Thesis Prize winners
English Celebrates Class Day 2021 Posted May 26, 2021

A virtual Class Day 2021 celebration for the Department of English was held Friday, May 14, 2021 at 4:00 pm.

With over one hundred attendees present on zoom, including concentrators, students, faculty, and friends, the department celebrated our thirty English concentrators from the Class of 2021.

2021 Undergarduate Prize winnders
Fifteen Students Recognized with Department of English Undergraduate Prizes Posted May 26, 2021

Fifteen Students Recognized with Department of English Undergraduate Prizes

Each year the Department of English’s Undergraduate faculty select from a large pool of student applicants to determine winners for the nine prizes offered by the department. This year, fifteen students were selected as recipients for these nine prizes from a pool of over sixty submissions. The selection was a difficult process as the submissions were exceptional. We would like to celebrate all those who submitted and the students who are recognized below.

Meredith Martin
Meredith Martin named recipient of Graduate Mentoring Award Posted May 17, 2021

Congratulations to Meredith Martin on being named a recipient of the McGraw Center's Graduate Mentoring Award.

Call for Proposals: Princeton Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism & the Humanities
Call for Proposals: Princeton Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism & the Humanities Posted May 11, 2021

The Princeton-Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities invites proposals for collaborative faculty-student summer research projects. These projects may include examinations of archives, work with data sets, the creation of maps, the development of renderings and/or visualizations, conducting interviews, and other initiatives not listed here.

Jim Richardson
Longtime English Professor, James Richardson, transfers to emeritus status. Posted May 11, 2021

Congratulations to James,“Jim” Richardson, professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts, will transfer to emeritus status on July 1, 2021, after teaching at Princeton for forty-one years. Jim was born January 1, 1950, and grew up in Garden City, New York, not far from where Charles Lindbergh took off in the Spirit of St. Louis on his transatlantic flight. Jim first arrived in Princeton as an undergraduate in 1967. After graduating summa cum laude in 1971, he received his Ph.D. at the University of Virginia in 1975.

2021 Majors Colloquium
2021 Majors Colloquium: Your Faves are Problematic: Reading and Teaching Fraught Texts Posted May 3, 2021

The Majors' Colloquium addresses a topic that our Undergraduate Advisory Council chooses each year; four faculty members are nominated by the senior class to speak. For 2021, it was professors Autumn Womack, Jeff Nunokawa, Kinohi Nishikawa and Anne Cheng.

Click here to view the event recording.

Joshua Bennett
Graduate alumnus, Joshua Bennett, wins 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship Posted April 14, 2021 Joshua Bennett, a 2016 graduate alumnus, Jacobus Scholar and the Mellon Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College, was awarded in the field of American literature.
Annabel Barry '19
News report on Annabel Barry, Princeton University Class of 2019 Posted April 9, 2021 It’s not every graduate student who sees work begun in a course flourish into a professionally consequential publication in the first year of study. And it’s a rare, extremely rare, undergraduate who sees this accomplishment. Annabel Barry is this exception.
Minari poster
Minari Screening and Conversation with Filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung and Professor Anne A. Cheng Posted April 7, 2021

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and a Golden Globe, “Minari” is a delicately wrought drama that follows a Korean-American family that moves to an Arkansas farm in search of their own American Dream. Tracing the material and emotional challenges of this new life in the rugged Ozarks for this young family, “Minari” shows the resilience of family and what it means to forge a home when you are seen as strangers from a different land.

RL Goldberg
RL Goldberg, Mary Naydan and Liora Selinger selected for Graduate School Teaching Award Posted April 6, 2021

Congratulations to RL Goldberg, Mary Naydan and Liora Selinger on being selected to receive a Graduate School Teaching Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching. 

Teaching Awards honor those graduate students who have made a significant and exceptional contribution to undergraduate teaching.

Course spotlight: "Language to Be Looked At"
Course spotlight: "Language to Be Looked At" Posted March 19, 2021

In fall 2020, students examined modernist and avant-garde experiments in word and image in the 20th century in the course, “Language to Be Looked At,” co-taught by Joshua Kotin, associate professor of English, and Irene Small, associate professor of art and archaeology. The course was crosslisted in the Program in Humanistic Studies, English, and art and archaeology.

Cammie Lee wins Gen Z Critics' Award
Cameron Lee ’22 wins film criticism prize for essay, review Posted March 10, 2021 Film criticism can affect beyond the understanding of particular works, to cultivate living attuned to interactions between internal and external environments. So writes Princeton University junior Cammie Lee in “Searching for Meaning: The Role of the Film Critic in Everyday Life.” Lee received the grand prize in Gen Z Critics’ 2021 film criticism contest for the essay and a review of the Japanese comedy Tampopo (1985).
ENG411 Final Project: Abolition Then and Now Exhibition Posted March 8, 2021

Abolition Then and Now is a collaborative, virtual exhibition put together as part of a final project for a course on the writings of Frederick Douglass and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the fall of 2020.

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