New director, scholars join Society of Fellows

A new director and three new postdoctoral scholars have joined the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts this year.

The program, begun in 2000-01, is intended to attract some of the best recent Ph.D. recipients in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences to the campus each year. It is made possible through the generosity of Trustee Emeritus Lloyd Cotsen.

The new director is Leonard Barkan , the Arthur Marks '19 Professor of Comparative Literature. He succeeds Alexander Nehamas. Barkan came to Princeton in 2001 from New York University, where he had been the Samuel Rudin University Professor of the Humanities and professor of English and fine arts since 1994.

Barkan's fields of interest are Renaissance literature and art history, as well as drama. A graduate of Swarthmore College, Barkan earned his master's degree from Harvard University and his doctoral degree from Yale University.

The new fellows were chosen from among 520 applicants for three-year terms. Based in the Joseph Henry House, the Cotsen Fellows teach half-time in their academic department or the Humanities Council and pursue their own research. They are:

Francisco Prado-Vilar , who recently received his Ph.D. in the history of art and architecture at Harvard University with a dissertation titled "In the Shadow of the Gothic Idol: The 'Cantigas de Santa Maria' and the Imagery of Love and Conversion." His research project will expand on his dissertation, developing an alternative model for understanding Gothic visual culture. He also will continue his research on Spanish painting.

Alexander Rehding , who received his Ph.D. in musicology in 1999 from the University of Cambridge. His dissertation on musical thought in Wilhelmine Germany, "Nature and Nationhood in Hugo Riemann's Dualistic Theory of Harmony," will be published by Cambridge University Press. While at Princeton, he will pursue a new research project on musical monumentality and the critical ambivalence it elicits by examining a number of 19th-century musical works and their contexts.

Hairong Yan , who just received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Washington with a dissertation on "Development, Contradictions and the Specter of Disposability: Rural Migrant Women in Search of Self-Development in Post-Mao China." Her research project will expand on her dissertation by analyzing the notion of "suzhi," or quality, promoted by the post-socialist state as an agent for economic development and as a measure of human value.

The three new fellows join five from the inaugural year of the program and five from last year who are continuing their work at Princeton in 2002-03.

The full story is available in the Weekly Bulletin.

Contact: Marilyn Marks (609) 258-3601