In the coming year, four Princeton faculty from the humanities and humanistically oriented social sciences will join the Humanities Council as Old Dominion Research Professors, senior faculty who will spend a full year of research leave on campus, engaging in interdisciplinary conversations.
They are Yaacob Dweck, Elizabeth Harman, Melissa Lane, and Susan J. Wolfson. During their time at the Council, they will pursue research on topics as diverse as the figure of the legislator in Platonic political thought; new philosophical investigations of how much we should sacrifice to help others; the emergence of a new “social type” in the Sephardic diaspora; and generative reading as a force of multiplicity in the age of Romanticism.
Humanities Council Chair Eric Gregory welcomed his colleagues to the Council. “The exciting projects of these distinguished Old Dominion Research Professors represent a range of disciplines and promise to enrich the broader University community,” he said. “In these uncertain times, I am particularly happy to announce awards that support humanistic research at Princeton.”
From Fall 2020, this core group of senior faculty will contribute to the Council’s programs and events and engage colleagues and students from across the University in sustained discussions about their work. They will also serve as Faculty Fellows in the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts.
Yaacob Dweck, Professor of History and the Program in Judaic Studies
Project: Rabbinic Reactionaries in the Sephardic Diaspora: Notes on a Social Type
Elizabeth Harman, Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy and the University Center for Human Values
Project: Morality Within the Realm of the Morally Permissible
Melissa Lane, Class of 1943 Professor of Politics and Director, University Center for Human Values
Project: Lycurgus, Solon, Charondas, and their Fellows: Figuring the Legislator in Platonic Political Thought and its Aftermath.
Susan J. Wolfson, Professor of English
Project: Romanticism’s Generative Reading
Old Dominion Research Professors are faculty who are appointed for a term of one year, one semester of which would otherwise have been devoted to a regular sabbatical leave. The Professorship extends that leave to one full year.
The Professors will be introduced to members of the University humanities community on Tuesday, September 1, 2020 at a Welcome Reception following the 14th Annual Humanities Colloquium.
