Sussman and Vadde New English Department Officers
Changes to the Duke English Department's administration came with the new fiscal year. Department Chair and Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS) positions transitioned on July 1. The department would like to thank our departing Chair, Robert Mitchell, and DUS Corina Stan.
After four years, Professor Robert Mitchell was succeeded as Department Chair by Professor Charlotte Sussman. Mitchell served as Chair during the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the department to make significant adjustments and look for new ways of doing things. This included relying heavily on Zoom and other virtual methods. His book Infectious Liberty: Biopolitics Between Romanticism and Liberalism was published in 2021. Mitchell will continue to serve as the director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory.
Prior to being appointed English Department Chair, Professor Sussman served as the department's Director of Undergraduate Studies 2015-17 and the Director of Graduate Studies 2019-21. Her work, Peopling the World: Representing Human Mobility from Milton to Malthus, was published in 2020. Sussman received the 2019-20 Richard Lublin Teaching Award, and she was one of the founding members of the Representing Migration Humanities Lab (2017-20).
Professor Aarthi Vadde is returning to the Director of Undergraduate Studies role, which she served from 2019-20, following Professor Corina Stan completing her term. During Stan’s term as DUS, she worked with Mitchell to host the Faculty Works-in-Progress Series. These sessions served as a way of promoting current work by English faculty. Stan published The Art of Distances: Ethical Thinking in Twentieth-Century Literaturein 2018.
Professor Vadde published the Chimeras of Form: Modernist Internationalism Beyond Europe, 1914-2016, in 2016. In 2020 She was named the National Humanities Center M.H. Abrams Fellow and won the American Comparative Literature Association Harry Levin Prize. Vadde is the co-host of the podcast Novel Dialogue with John Plotz, Barbara Mandel Professor of Humanities at Brandeis University.
Professors Sussman and Vadde bring a wealth of knowledge, experience, and dedication to these leadership roles. The English Department is excited to have them leading us into the future.
