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DEPARTMENT FACULTY
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- FACULTY
PROFILES:
includes contact information (office hours, e-mail, etc.) and areas
of specialization along with details about
faculty members' academic careers, publications, honors,
interests
- DIRECTORY
[this site has not yet been updated for Fall 08;
for now, please refer instead to the Faculty Profiles page, linked above, for current information]
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FACULTY ON LEAVE 2008-09
For the academic year: Profs. Bizup, Dailey, Damrosch, Douglas, Hirsch, O'Meally, Peters, Robbins, Seidel, and Tawil
For Fall 2008: Profs. Marcus, Shapiro, and Stewart
For Spring 2008: Prof. Rosenberg
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Faculty News
KATHERINE BIERS JOINS OUR DEPARTMENT
We welcome a new addition to our faculty: Professor KATHERINE BIERS, an Americanist whose specializations include theater;19th- and 20th-century American literature and culture; media studies; cultural studies; theories of gender and sexuality; African-American literature; and modernism. As her diverse fields of interest attest, Prof. Biers is sure to bring a distinctive perspective to the performative arts, from the traditional to radically innovative, traversing the arc from stage to cyberspace. She is currently writing a book on the idea of the virtual in pre-WWI American philosophy and media culture entitled The Promise of the Virtual: Writing and Media in the Progressive Era.
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This fall she will teach a lecture on American drama, giving the subject her own special spin. On the one hand, she will engage the kinds of issues that link her to the critical approach for which Columbia's department has long been associated--broadly speaking, the relationship between literature and society. Her lecture on American drama will examine American drama’s response to key cultural events and transformations of the 20th century, such as the rise of mass culture; mechanization and alienation; labor unrest; race and racism; and Cold War paranoia. On the other hand, she will also address more recent concerns, such as: How has American identity been constructed and contested on stage? and How does drama relate to other media, such as film? This promises to be an exciting course appealing to wide and diverse interests; likewise, Prof. Biers promises to be an exciting, interesting presence in our department, and we are very glad to have her with us. |
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CONGRATULATIONS! |
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to Prof. JOSEPH SLAUGHTER, |
awarded
the 2008
Wellek Prize by the
American
Comparative Literature
Association
for
his book,
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HUMAN RIGHTS, INC.:
THE WORLD NOVEL,
NARRATIVE FORM,
AND INTERNATIONAL LAW
(Fordham UP, 2007). |
The Wellek Prize recognizes outstanding work in the field of literary and cultural theory; past recipients have included Umberto Eco, Thomas Pavel, Geoffrey Hartman, as well as our department's late Edward Said in 1983 for The World, the Text, and the Critic. It is given by the ACLA in alternate years with the Harry Levin Prize which emphasizes literary history or criticism as opposed to theory; past recipients of the Levin Prize include our department's Julie Stone Peters (2003 for Theatre of the
Book: Print, Text, and Performance in Europe 1480-1880) and Gauri Viswanathan (1999 for Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and
Belief). Together the Wellek and Levin Prizes constitute the country's most prestigious awards in the discipline of comparative literature.
With departmental faculty receiving 3 of the last 10 ACLA awards, Columbia University, which developed the first comparative literature program in this country, not only can take pride in its originary role but can more importantly lay claim, as these ACLA winners' diverse work affirms, to housing a vanguard program that continues in the forefront of the discipline.
The prize will be presented to the Prof. Slaughter at the annual meeting of the ACLA in Long Beach, California on April 26.
For more about Human Rights, Inc.
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