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AROUND THE QUADS
Arac Chosen to Head English
Department
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Jonathan Arac, a former faculty member who most recently
was a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, has
been selected as the new chair of the Department of English and
Comparative Literature, effective July 1. Arac, a specialist in
19th-century literature and culture, taught at Columbia from
1987-90.
"Chairing the department gives me an opportunity to help what
has been one of the three or four most important departments in the
history of the field," Arac said in a statement announcing his
appointment.
Arac's research focuses on problems in the historical and
comparative study of culture, literature and criticism, emphasizing
19th-century England and America and 20th-century theory. He is the
author of Huckleberry Finn as Idol and Target: The Functions of
Criticism in Our Time (1997), Critical Genealogies:
Historical Situations for Postmodern Literary Studies (1987)
and Commissioned Spirits: The Shaping of Social Motion in
Dickens, Carlyle, Melville and Hawthorne (1979), all published
by Columbia University Press, as well as the editor or co-editor of
several other works. He is currently at work on a book analyzing
the emergence of the term "identity" in American intellectual
life.
Arac's appointment ends an 18-month search to find a new
English department chair. Professor of Classics Roger
Bagnall, who has been acting chair of the department since
August 2000, will continue until Arac arrives on campus.
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