Annual Report / 2019-20
are doing so in new ways. We offer large lecture classes that draw students across campus (like “American Cinema” and “Science Fiction”), and a menu of small courses with an intimate classroom environment (“Latinx Autobiography” and “Introduction to Indigenous Studies,” for example). Later in this report, you’ll find details of many new and re-imagined courses. This year, even more than in the past, we’re working on effective outreach among students
“We’ve focused on creating courses that welcome students into the department, and show the breadth of skills and ideas that can be studied under the designation ENG.”
on campus, as well as alumni and our broader community. We’re thrilled to have appointed an outreach officer, Rebecca Rainof, who is one of two senior research scholars in our department. Another important decision in 2019 to 2020 was to share the workload more fairly, given that some members of our department are jointly appointed with other units. Joint appointees will now have partial service roles and advising loads. Going forward, we are seeking other ways to even out the workload among faculty and support our assistant professors during the most research-intense period of their careers. In February 2020, we hired Assistant Professor Robbie Richardson, who works on 18th-century global and Indigenous studies. Prof. Richardson’s hire was also supported by the Dean of Faculty’s Target of Opportunity program. Prof. Richardson comes to Princeton from his position as senior lecturer in the School of English at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. In his well-regarded monograph titled “The Savage and the Modern Self: North American Indians in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture” (University of Toronto Press, 2018), Richardson writes about the use and meaning of material objects in Indigenous cultures during the 18th century. He shows that the material
cultures of North American Indigenous peoples were appropriated and transformed through contact with European (especially British) imperial power in the period, and that the use and meaning of “savage” people and objects are mediated by domination, exchange and the construction of strategic and diplomatic relationships between Indigenous Americans and Europeans. Prof. Richardson joins Princeton’s emerging Indigenous Studies program. He will offer classes involving museums, repatriation and the future of Indigenous objects. His new work expands beyond North America to include the Indigenous material cultures of South America, Oceana and Australia. Leaning toward, not away from, the difficulties and limitations we’re working with while acknowledging challenges to the future of the humanities, has helped define new possibilities and priorities for Princeton’s Department of English. I hope this sense of opening and growth will be apparent from the rich and deep engagements described in this report.
Sophie Gee Associate Professor
7