Three Lewis Center for the Arts faculty members have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences: Professor of Dance and Lewis Center Chair Judith Hamera, Professor of Creative Writing Ilya Kaminsky, and Fintan O’Toole, Lecturer in Theater and English and Princeton’s Visiting Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Professor in Irish Letters. They are counted among 269 newly elected individuals drawn from academia, the arts, industry, policy, research, and science.
Chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts Judith Hamera. Photo by Jon Sweeney
Elected to the Academy’s Arts and Humanities class for performing arts, Hamera is an award-winning performance studies scholar whose interdisciplinary research lies at the intersection of American studies, communication, cultural studies, and performance and dance studies. Her most recent book, Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, and the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization, received the 2018 Outstanding Book Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, the 2017-2018 Biennial Sally Banes Publication Prize from the American Society for Theatre Research, and the 2020 Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize for Dance Research from the Dance Studies Association. Hamera’s book, Dancing Communities: Performance, Difference and Connection in the Global City, received the Book of the Year award from the National Communication Association and is considered by many as a landmark volume in dance scholarship. She is the editor of Opening Acts: Performance in/as Communication and Cultural Studies and co-editor of the Cambridge Companion to American Travel Writing (2009) and the Sage Handbook of Performance Studies. Hamera’s essays have appeared in Cultural Studies, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Dance Research Journal, Modern Drama, Qualitative Inquiry, TDR: The Drama Review, Text and Performance Quarterly, Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Women and Language, and elsewhere. Her 2019 article, “Rehearsal Problems: Gus Giordano, The Rehearsal, and the Critical Utility of Forgotten Dance Triumphs,” received the Gertrude Lippincott Award for Best English Language Dance Studies Article from the Dance Studies Association. She is also recipient of the National Communication Association’s Lilla Heston Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Performance Studies and has served as editor of Text and Performance Quarterly.
Hamera joined the Program in Dance faculty in 2014 and began her tenure as Lewis Center Chair in July 2022. She also has a faculty appointment in Princeton’s Effron Center for the Study of America and affiliations with the Programs in Gender and Sexuality Studies and Urban Studies. She regularly teaches courses on the history, theory, practice, and criticism of dance. In the dance program this fall, Hamera will lead a course on dance across cultures.
Professor of Creative Writing Ilya Kaminsky. Photo courtesy Ilya Kaminsky
Kaminsky, elected to the Academy’s Arts and Humanities class for literature, is an acclaimed poet whom the BBC selected as “one of the 12 artists that changed the world.” He is the author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa and co-editor and co-translator of many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva. Published in 2019, Deaf Republic was The New York Times’ Notable Book for that year and was also named Best Book of 2019 by dozens of other publications. Kaminsky’s work has won The Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the National Jewish Book Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, Lannan Fellowship, Academy of American Poets’ Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and Poetry Magazine‘s Levinson Prize. His work has been shortlisted for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, Neustadt International Literature Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize (UK). His poems have been translated into over 20 languages, and his books have been published in many countries, including Turkey, Iceland, the Netherlands, Germany, Russia, France, Mexico, Macedonia, Romania, Spain, and China, where his poetry was awarded the Yinchuan International Poetry Prize. In January, Kaminsky was named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a USA Fellow. His next poetry collection, Silent City, is anticipated in 2024.
Appointed to the Program in Creative Writing faculty in January, Kaminsky is currently teaching advanced poetry workshops for the program. In the fall, he will lead two introductory poetry workshops for undergraduate students.
Princeton’s Visiting Leonard L.Milberg ’53 Professor in Irish Letters Fintan O’Toole. Photo by Ben Russell
O’Toole is elected as an International Honorary Member in the Academy’s class for Leadership, Policy and Communications, including journalism. Widely recognized as one of Ireland’s leading public intellectuals, O’Toole is a columnist for The Irish Times and regularly contributes to The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Granta, The Guardian, The Observer, and other international publications. His books on theater include works on William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Thomas Murphy. His books on politics include the bestsellers We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland, named Non-fiction Book of the Year by An Post Irish Book Awards; Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain; Ship of Fools; and Enough is Enough. O’Toole’s History of Ireland in 100 Objects, which covers 100 highly charged artifacts from the last 10,000 years, is currently the basis for Ireland’s postage stamps. For his journalistic and critical work, he has received the A.T. Cross Award for Supreme Contribution to Irish Journalism, the Millennium Social Inclusion Award, Journalist of the Year in 2010, the Orwell Prize and the European Press Prize. He has been appointed official biographer of Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney.
At Princeton, O’Toole serves as the 2022-23 chair of the Fund for Irish Studies lecture series, which offers free, public events celebrating Irish culture and history. For the English Department and Program in Theater, he regularly teaches courses on Irish theater, literature, and cultural studies.
Announcing this year’s new members, Chair of the Academy’s Board of Directors Nancy C. Andrews said, “In its earliest days, the Academy sought members who would help address issues and opportunities confronting a young nation. We feel a similar urgency and have elected a class that brings diverse expertise to meet the pressing challenges and possibilities that America and the world face today.”
Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences honors excellence and convenes leaders from every field of human endeavor to examine new ideas, address issues of importance to the nation and the world, and work together, as expressed in its charter, “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.” The academy’s studies have helped set the direction of research and analysis in science and technology policy, global security and international affairs, social policy, education, and the arts and humanities.
Other Princeton faculty members elected to the Academy in the area of Arts and Humanities in recent years include Director and Professor of Creative Writing Yiyun Li (2022), Professor of Creative Writing Patricia Smith (2022), Dean of the College and Professor of Theater Jill Dolan (2016), and recent Presidential Visiting Scholar Hilton Als (2021).
The membership of the academy includes more than 250 Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners. The new class will be inducted at a ceremony at the academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Read the full announcement from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences »
