Five new scholars joined the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts this fall. The society is an interdisciplinary community of postdoctoral fellows and Princeton faculty members that fosters vibrant and innovative interdisciplinary research, teaching and collaboration in the humanities and humanities-related social sciences.
Established in 1999 by a gift of the late charter trustee Lloyd Cotsen and the Humanities Council’s leadership, the society offers outstanding scholars with a recent Ph.D. the opportunity to enhance their teaching and research over a three-year term.
The Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts welcomed five new postdoctoral fellows this fall. Pictured from left: Miriam Pensack, Julia Silverman, Ripley Stroud, Jason Beckman and Bingjie Wang.
Fellows hold appointments as associate research scholars in the Humanities Council, and as lecturers in their academic host departments, teaching one course per term while conducting their own research.
They meet regularly for discussions, seminars, workshops and reading groups to pursue new knowledge and understanding within and across disciplines. Cotsen fellows also advise and mentor undergraduate students, participate in academic programs and panels, present their research, develop new courses and co-teach with faculty members.
Laura Edwards, the new faculty director of the Society of Fellows, said she is “very much impressed by the highly accomplished and versatile scholars in the society, both incoming and returning, and I look forward to an exciting year of interdisciplinary conversations and intellectual explorations.” Edwards is the Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty and professor of history.
The full cohort of 13 Cotsen fellows is drawn from a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and humanities-related social sciences — and includes one astrophysicist. The new Cotsen fellows of the 2026-29 cohort are:
Jason Beckman
Jason Beckman
Appointed in the Department of East Asian Studies, Beckman is a literary and media scholar whose work blends literary studies, media theory, area studies and human-computer interaction, with a focus on Japanese literature and emerging media technologies. At Princeton, he is working on his first book project, preliminarily titled “Encounterings: Virtual ‘You,’ Artificial ‘I,’ and Where ‘We’ Meet in Media.” He earned his Ph.D. in East Asian languages and cultures from Stanford University. This fall, he is teaching the course “Japanese Horror: Cognitive and Embodied Approaches.”
Miriam Pensack
Miriam Pensack
Pensack is a historian of Latin America and the Caribbean whose scholarship and teaching focus on modern Latin American political history and U.S. foreign policy in the region. Appointed in the Department of History, she is working on her first book project, preliminarily titled “The Empire Within: Guantánamo Bay and the Panama Canal from the Cold War to the War on Terror.” Pensack is also a journalist and holds a Ph.D. in history from New York University. This fall, she is teaching the course “Drug War in the Americas, 1971-Present.”
Julia Silverman
Julia Silverman
Appointed in the Department of Art and Archaeology, Silverman is an art historian who specializes in craft and design, Indigenous studies and the history of science, with a focus on 20th-century Native American and American visual culture. At Princeton, she is completing the manuscript for her first book on Indigenous craft revitalization projects of the 1930s and 1940s. She will also begin work on a second project examining connections between craft and military technology during World War II. Silverman received her Ph.D. in the history of art and architecture from Harvard University. This fall, she is teaching “Native American Art on the Move: Place and Displacement.”
Ripley Stroud
Ripley Stroud
Appointed in the Department of Philosophy, Stroud is primarily interested in ethics and epistemology. At Princeton, she is building out the framework of her dissertation, “Epistemic Respect and the Right to Be Believed,” to examine how bad-faith interlocutors impact our moral duty to take people at their word. She is also developing a related project on normative conflict. A third project concerns love; she argues that to love someone well, we must love at least some of the people they were in the past. Stroud earned her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This fall, she is teaching the course “Love and Respect in Philosophy and Literature.”
Bingjie Wang
Bingjie Wang
Wang is an astrophysicist whose research focuses on developing rigorous methodologies to infer the physical properties of galaxies and black holes. At Princeton, her research focuses on the Little Red Dots — a population of compact, luminous red sources discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope. She developed some of the earliest physical interpretations of these objects, along with key insights into their nature. Wang is supported by a NASA Hubble Fellowship, hosted through the Department of Astrophysics, and has led observing programs as principal investigator on the James Webb Space Telescope. She earned her Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics from Johns Hopkins University.
