PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Amanda Anderson, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities and professor of English, has been appointed director of Brown University’s Cogut Center for the Humanities. She will begin her work as director at the start of the new academic year in July, succeeding Michael Steinberg, the inaugural Cogut director, who was recently appointed vice provost for the arts.
“We are indeed fortunate to have a figure of Professor Anderson’s intellectual stature coming into this key position at Brown at a time when plans are underway to enhance humanities research and teaching,” said Dean of the Faculty Kevin McLaughlin in a letter announcing the appointment to faculty. “Her service as a member of the Cogut Center Governing Board over the last couple of years means that she is fully abreast of the latest discussions surrounding the center’s future [and able] to build immediately on the distinctive strengths that have been developed at the Cogut Center over the last decade.”
Anderson, a literary scholar and theorist, came to Brown in the fall of 2012 from Johns Hopkins University, where she had been the Caroline Donovan Professor of English Literature.
“Given the importance of the humanities in the University’s strategic plan as well as opportunities presented by prominent new faculty hires in the humanities, the Cogut Center is poised to support and enhance the very strong foundation in humanities scholarship for which Brown is widely known and respected,” said Anderson. “I am very excited to work with colleagues in and beyond the humanities to promote exciting programming and collaborations.”
Anderson’s research addresses questions of intellectual history, disciplinary formation, and the relation of art and politics. She is the author of The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the Cultures of Theory (2006), The Powers of Distance: Cosmopolitanism and the Cultivation of Detachment (2001), and Tainted Souls and Painted Faces: The Rhetoric of Fallenness in Victorian Culture (1993). She is at work on a book project called Bleak Liberalism, focused on the aesthetics and politics of liberalism from the 19th and 20th centuries.
About the Cogut Center
Founded in 2003 to support collaborative research among scholars in the humanities, the Cogut Center focuses on interdisciplinary and comparative work across cultural and linguistic boundaries. A member of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes, the Cogut Center offers regular fellowships to faculty and graduate students to support research and scholarly exchange and hosts distinguished visiting scholars for both short- and long-term fellowships.
The Cogut Center hosts a rich and varied program of scholarly events throughout the year, including readings, lectures, workshops, seminars and performances, to promote the research, study, and enjoyment of the humanities at Brown. The center hosts a number of event series throughout the year, including the Fellows’ Seminars, Humanities Weekend, and the Hannah Arendt Seminars, as well as the annual Invitational Lecture in the Humanities and Sarah Cutts Frerichs Lecture in Victorian Studies.