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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.