Amy Hungerford Appointed Executive Vice President for Arts and Sciences

Dear fellow members of the Columbia community:

I am very pleased to announce that I have appointed Professor Amy Hungerford, a scholar of twentieth and twenty-first century American literature, as the next Executive Vice President for Arts and Sciences and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, effective January 1, 2020.  Professor Hungerford is currently Dean of Yale University’s Division of Humanities within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Bird White Housum Professor of English, and Professor of American Studies.

Amy’s career has combined notable scholarship and tireless mentoring with a wealth of experience in administering core academic programs.  Her oversight of 23 humanities departments and programs at Yale has demonstrated a talent for effective stewardship of resources and for the recruitment, hiring, and advancement of the highest-caliber faculty.  Chairing a large committee of stakeholders, she successfully planned a major capital project—a renovation with lead gifts of $75 million—to create a central home for the humanities on Yale’s campus.  Her deanship has included leadership of an historic revision of Yale’s tenure system, as well as cross-school strategic planning for the humanities.

Amy’s expertise in the literature of post-1945 America emerges from an innovative blending of history, ethnography, and literary criticism.  She has written extensively about the influence of social networks on contemporary writers and their audiences, as well as the role of religion in modern American literature.  She is the editor of the post-1945 volume of the ninth edition of The Norton Anthology of American Literature, and the most recent of her several books is Making Literature Now.

I want to say how very grateful I am to the members of the search committee for their thoughtful, considered, and diligent work throughout this process, and for devoting their time and energy to this vital task.  And, I want to express my deep appreciation to Professor Maya Tolstoy, who has so ably led the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as Interim Executive Vice President and Dean for the past academic year.  Maya deserves our gratitude for many contributions, none more significant than her steadfast commitment over several years to fostering an environment at Columbia where women and other underrepresented faculty can thrive.  We look forward to her return on a full-time basis to the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. 

Please join me in congratulating Amy Hungerford and in welcoming her to the Columbia community. 

Sincerely,

Lee C. Bollinger