April 10, 2019
Dear colleagues,
I am delighted to announce that Amy Hungerford, the Bird White Housum Professor of English and Professor of American Studies, has been reappointed to a five-year term as FAS Dean of Humanities, effective July 1, 2019.
In this role, Amy will continue to oversee the departments and programs in the FAS Division of Humanities, including tenure, promotion, and ladder faculty searches, as well as issues that concern individual departments and the division as a whole. Since her appointment as Divisional Director in 2014 (a position converted to Dean in 2016), Amy has played a central role in the governance of the FAS as a whole, as well as the division of Humanities. She took leadership in the formulation of the revised FAS Tenure and Appointments Policy (FASTAP 2016), while also guiding the division through a historic level of hiring at both junior and senior levels. In the process, Amy has partnered with departments across the division as they renew their faculties, maintaining long-standing areas of excellence while establishing Yale’s leadership in new and emerging areas of research.
She has also taken central responsibility for articulating the physical and intellectual architecture of 320 York Street (formerly the Hall of Graduate Studies), which will serve as the hub for the humanities at Yale upon its expected completion in Fall 2020. In addition, Amy serves as chair of the University Humanities Strategy Committee, which has been charged by the provost with creating a strategic plan for deploying recent investments in the humanities at Yale.
Even while performing her decanal duties, Amy has remained active as a scholar and teacher. Her most recent book, Making Literature Now (Stanford), was published in 2016, as was her edition of The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Literature Since 1945. These accomplishments join her long record of achievement, which also includes two other books: Postmodern Belief: American Literature and Religion Since 1960 (Princeton) and The Holocaust of Texts: Genocide, Literature, and Personification (Chicago). During her term as Dean, she has also continued to mentor graduate students and advise dissertations in English, Comparative Literature, and American Studies, and to teach at the acclaimed Bread Loaf School of English.
I have benefited enormously from Amy’s wise counsel. She has a deep understanding of and commitment to the division of Humanities – both intellectually and interpersonally – and an exceptional ability to find solutions where all doors have seemed locked. She is uncompromising in her integrity, boundless in her insight, and gifted in her prose. I learn from her daily.
I was gratified to discover that my experience is widely shared. I thank the numerous faculty and staff from across the FAS and the university more broadly who provided guidance and feedback during the reappointment process. I was delighted to hear from so many of you how Amy’s excellence has enabled you to thrive, and to share with her your appreciation for her outstanding work.
We are fortunate to have such an accomplished and dynamic leader joining us for another five-year term. Please join me in congratulating Amy on her reappointment.
Warmly,
Tamar Gendler
Tamar Szabó Gendler
Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Vincent J. Scully Professor of Philosophy
Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science