Dear Colleagues,
I am pleased to announce that Dr. Priti Joshi has been named the next Susan Resneck Pierce Professor of Humanities and Honors, recommended by a committee of faculty and appointed by President Crawford. The Pierce Professorship is a five-year term that begins in Fall 2022.
Dr. Joshi is currently a Distinguished Professor in the English Department, has jointly served as the James Dolliver National Endowment for the Humanities Distinguished Teaching Professor, and has taught at Puget Sound since 1999. Professor Joshi’s scholarly accomplishments include Empire News: The Anglo-Indian Press Writes India (SUNY Press, 2021), as well as scholarly articles, essays, and publications on pedagogy. For 2022-23, Professor Joshi received the M.C. Lang Fellowship from the Rare Book School, Charlottesville, VA, and also has received the John Lantz Sabbatical Fellowship and Martin Nelson Summer Research grants. Professor Joshi regularly teaches in the Core Curriculum, including SSI1 and SSI2 courses on travel writing and foodways, and in the English Department, focusing on British Literature of the Victorian era, creative non-fiction, and major authors such as George Eliot, Charlotte Brontë, and Charles Dickens. She has also served as director of the PacRim Program.
The Pierce Professor of Humanities and Honors will be committed to teaching major texts within both departmental and non-departmental courses. In her application, Professor Joshi suggests that the humanities “can serve to both extend the boundaries of the known and engage students where they are with what they know and recognize. To do both—to stretch and to relate—requires something simple that lies at the core of the humanities: defamiliarization and a willingness to work within multiplicity and ambiguity.” Routinely, the Pierce Professor will commit a part of their teaching responsibilities to some combination of courses in the core curriculum, in the Humanities program, and in the Honors program. Proposed courses on the book as human artefact, decolonizing and diversifying what and how young children read, and a course on borders will further enrich Humanities offerings. In addition, Professor Joshi’s courses for the Honors program will further globalize the program’s offerings, focusing on translations required to engage texts from other places and cultures, as well as writing courses for Honors students.
The strength of Puget Sound’s faculty is evident in Professor Joshi’s accomplishments and in the exceptional records of others who were nominated and considered for this professorship.
Please join me in congratulating Priti Joshi as the Susan Resneck Pierce Professor of Humanities and Honors,
Laura
Laura L. Behling, Ph.D. l Provost and Professor of English