Crown named executive director of Council of the Humanities

Kathleen Crown

Photo by Kevil Duhon

Kathleen Crown, formerly a residential college director of studies at Princeton University, has been appointed executive director of the Council of the Humanities, effective July 15.

"Kathleen has been an unusually imaginative director of studies at Mathey College," said Gideon Rosen, the Stuart Professor of Philosophy and chair of the Council of the Humanities. "She brings with her an extraordinary range of experience, both in administration and student life, and in teaching and research in the humanities. We are very lucky to have found her."

Crown joined the Princeton staff in 2001 to teach full time in the Writing Program. Her courses included "The Politics of Personal Narrative" and "Poetry and the Public Sphere." In 2003, she was named director of studies at Wilson College and moved to Mathey College in 2004, where she stayed for nine years. At Mathey, she developed cultural and intellectual programs connecting students with faculty, graduate fellows and one another, and advised undergraduates about the curriculum.

At the Council of the Humanities, Crown will administer a broad range of programs in the humanities, including the visiting fellows program, the Program in Humanistic Studies and the journalism program. She will also work closely with the chair of the council and with alumni and donors to foster innovative teaching, research and intellectual exchange among faculty, students, guest scholars, writers and artists.

The council, which this year marks its 60th anniversary, is a crossroads for artists and scholars, where students, faculty members and visiting fellows engage in research and intellectual exchange in a broad array of interdisciplinary subjects.

Before coming to Princeton, Crown was an assistant professor at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, where she taught American literature, 20th-century poetry and poetics, and creative writing. She has also taught at Rutgers University and Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

As a scholar, Crown has devoted particular attention to the place of poetry in the public sphere, reflecting a larger interest in using the humanities to encourage new forms of dialogue between the academy and society. Crown received her bachelor's degree in English from Michigan State University, a master of fine arts in creative writing (poetry) from Louisiana State University and a Ph.D. in literatures in English from Rutgers.