Princeton professors Yiyun Li (Lewis Center for the Arts) and Michael Smith (Philosophy) have received the University’s Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities. The annual award recognizes research, publication, teaching, or other distinguished service to the University community.
Yiyun Li is a professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts and director of the Program in Creative Writing. She joined the Princeton faculty in 2017.
She is the author of 10 books, including “The Book of Goose,” which was among The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2022, and “Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life.”Her work has been translated into more than 20 languages.
In addition to teaching fiction at Princeton, she also serves the broader literary community in multiple ways, including as a judge of the Booker International Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction.
Michael Smith is the McCosh Professor of Philosophy and an associated faculty member in the Department of Politics. He initially served on the Princeton faculty from 1985 to 1989 and returned to the University in 2004. He is also a member of the Executive Committee of the University Center for Human Values.
Smith’s research focuses on ethics, moral psychology, philosophy of action, political philosophy, philosophy of law, and aesthetics — topics he has explored in teaching numerous undergraduate and graduate courses at Princeton, including the popular “Introduction to Moral Philosophy.”
He is also an executive committee member of the Humanities Council’s Committee for Film Studies and has taught courses on aesthetics and on film.
