President Andrew Hamilton and Provost Katherine Fleming today announced the appointment of Gene Andrew Jarrett as the Seryl Kushner Dean of NYU’s College of Arts and Science.
NYU President Andrew Hamilton and Provost Katherine Fleming today announced the appointment of Gene Andrew Jarrett as the Seryl Kushner Dean of NYU’s College of Arts and Science, effective September 1, 2017.
Dr. Jarrett comes to NYU from Boston University, where he is Associate Dean of the Faculty (Humanities Division) and Professor of English and African American Studies.
President Hamilton said, “Gene Jarrett is a distinguished scholar with a deep commitment to undergraduate liberal arts education, an enthusiasm for teaching and mentoring students, and seasoned leadership at both the college level and university-wide across schools and disciplines. His experience at Boston University – another large, complex urban research university – and dedication to undergraduate education convinced us that he is just the right person for the deanship of the College. We are very pleased to welcome him to the NYU community, and look forward to his leadership of the College.
“The Search Committee, chaired by Jim Canary, Chair and Professor of Chemistry in the Faculty of Arts and Science, did outstanding work. They demonstrated great dedication to this important task and brought us exceptional candidates. We are grateful to them.”
Dr. Jarrett was named Associate Dean at BU in 2014; he joined the faculty there in 2007. At BU, he co-chaired the 2016 University Task Force on Faculty Diversity and Inclusion, and previously served as Chair of the English Department and Acting Director of the Program in African American Studies.
He specializes in African American literary history from the eighteenth century to the present; U.S. literary history between the Civil War and World War II; race, ethnic, and cultural studies; and theories of literature, aesthetics, and intellectual historiography. He is the author of two books, Representing the Race: A New Political History of African American Literature (2011) and Deans and Truants: Race and Realism in African American Literature (2007). He is the editor or co-editor of multiple volumes on African American literature and literary criticism: the two-volume Wiley-Blackwell Anthology of African American Literature (2014); The Blackwell Companion to African American Literature (2010); The Collected Novels of Paul Laurence Dunbar (2009); The New Negro: Readings on Race, Representation, and African American Culture, 1892-1938 (2007); A Long Way from Home by Claude McKay (2007); The Complete Stories of Paul Laurence Dunbar (2006); and African American Literature Beyond Race: An Alternative Reader (2006). He is also the founding Editor-in-Chief of the African American Studies module for Oxford Bibliographies Online, published by Oxford University Press.
Among his many honors and achievements, Dr. Jarrett received the Walter Jackson Bate Fellowship in English Literature at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2010 and an ACLS Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies in 2014.
Dr. Jarrett attended Stuyvesant High School in New York City, earned his A.B. in English from Princeton University, and received his A.M. and Ph.D. in English from Brown University.