Princeton professors Linda Colley (History) and Jill Dolan (English and Lewis Center for the Arts) have received the University’s Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities, which “recognizes extraordinary faculty distinction in humanities and publication; in teaching and advising; and in humanities-related University service.”
Linda Colley is the Shelby M.C. Davis 1958 Professor of History. Her research encompasses British, constitutional, global and imperial history. She joined the Princeton faculty in 2003. Colley’s many honors include being named a Dame of the Order of the British Empire in 2022 by Queen Elizabeth II.
At Princeton, Colley’s lecture courses on British imperial history from 1600 to 2000 regularly draw hundreds of undergraduates. Drawing on her deep connections with the departments of English and art and archaeology, and strong relationships with scholars around the world, she devised a perennially popular graduate seminar focused on new research into the 18th through early 20th centuries, which brings experts in the history, literature and art of the period to campus.
Jill Dolan, the Annan Professor in English and professor of theater in the Lewis Center for the Arts, joined the Princeton faculty in 2008. She served as dean of the college from 2015 to 2024. She has received many awards for writing and teaching, including being named the American Society for Theatre Research’s Distinguished Scholar in 2013.
Dolan is an expert on contemporary American feminist and queer theater and performance, and American theater more generally. She served for six years as the director of Princeton’s Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies and is a faculty affiliate of the Program in American Studies. Dolan devised multiple new courses across the arts and humanities at Princeton. Often, her classes have invited students to explore underrecognized contributors to theater and performance history.
