The Council of the Humanities is pleased to announce two new Behrman Professors in the Humanities; Effie Rentzou, associate professor of French in the Department of French and Italian, and Yelena Baraz, associate professor of Latin Literature in the Department of Classics.
Rentzou will start her three-year term in the academic year 2017-2018 and will be teaching in the spring. Baraz will begin her three-year term in the academic year 2018-2019 teaching in the fall.
The appointment recognizes distinguished humanities scholars and dedicated teachers from within the University community. Behrman Professors will lead the Humanities Sequence and play a leading role in the humanities at Princeton.
Rentzou and Baraz join English professor Esther (“Starry”) Schor, the Council’s inaugural Behrman Professor in the Humanities, and English professor Jeff Dolven, who begins teaching in the sequence this spring. In 2017-2018 he will teach both semesters of the intensive course and lead the faculty team.
Rentzou studies avant-garde and modernist literature and art, and particularly poetics, the relation between image and text, social analysis of literature, politics and literature, and the internationalization of the avant-garde.
Rentzou will start her term in 2017-2018
“I am thrilled to have the opportunity to join the other two Behrman Professors and be part of the Humanities family for three years,” Rentzou said. “My research is squarely rooted within modernist literature and art, but my undergraduate degree in Classics had an enormous impact on my perspective and approach.” Rentzou taught in the Humanities sequence in 2016. “I can say with certainty that this was one of the most rewarding teaching experiences I had at Princeton. It was exciting, exhilarating, unexpected, and thought-provoking.”
Baraz specializes in Latin literature, Roman cultural history, and history of ideas. She is interested in how literary texts shape, and are in turn shaped by, social and cultural forces.
Baraz will start her term in 2018-2019
“I love teaching in the Humanities sequence,” Baraz said. “I have broad interests in literature, history, and art from Greco-Roman antiquity to the present. I am also a longtime faculty adviser of freshmen/sophomores and Classics concentrators, and I particularly enjoy helping students figure out what they are interested in. As a Behrman Professor, I look forward to joining students and colleagues in exploring new texts and ideas.”
