Tamsen Wolff, associate professor of English, has been awarded the Cotsen Family Faculty Fellowship for academic years 2025-26 through 2027-28. The fellowship recognizes faculty members as outstanding teachers of undergraduates, and supports their developing and teaching new undergraduate courses, or making distinctive contributions of other kinds to the undergraduate teaching program.
Recognizing that “theater is interdisciplinary in nature and combines multiple practical areas of study with research and literary analysis,” Wolff plans to collaborate with the Lewis Center for the Arts to establish a category of courses that explicitly and consistently join English courses with Program in Theater courses, “to center the pedagogical opportunity to think deeply about the relationship between dramatic analysis and production.”
A Cotsen Fellowship also provides support for two graduate students in the Cotsen Fellow’s department, chosen for their promise as teachers, to assist in the teaching program being developed and to learn the art of teaching from an exemplar of it.
As a scholar and teacher, writes Simon Gikandi, the Class of 1943 University Professor of English and English department chair, Wolff is also “poised to play an important role in the University’s new initiatives in Media and Meaning, bridging the gap between historical traditions of drama and theater and new electronic media platforms.”
In 2023, Wolff was one of four faculty members who received President’s Awards for Distinguished Teaching at Commencement.
Read more about the 2025 Cotsen Family Faculty Fellows on the Office of the Dean of the Faculty website.