Five new postdoctoral scholars have joined the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts this fall. The society is an interdisciplinary community of postdoctoral fellows and Princeton faculty members that aims to bring innovative approaches to scholarship and teaching. It offers outstanding young scholars with a recent Ph.D. the opportunity to enhance their teaching and research over a period of three years.
The Society of Fellows, initiated by a gift from Lloyd Cotsen, charter trustee and member of the Class of 1950, and established under the leadership of the Humanities Council in 1999, is directed by Michael Gordin, the Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History.
“The Society is a treasure of the humanities at Princeton,” Gordin said. “We receive many hundreds of applications each cycle, and are able to invite only a handful here for a three-year term. They are some of the most exciting, brilliant and diverse young scholars working in the humanities anywhere.”
The full cohort of 13 Cotsen postdoctoral fellows is drawn from a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and humanities-related social sciences — and includes one astrophysicist. They are appointed as lecturers in the Humanities Council and their academic host departments, teaching half-time while conducting their own research.
Meeting regularly for formal and informal discussion, seminars, lectures, workshops and reading groups, the fellows pursue new knowledge and understanding within and across disciplines. During their time at Princeton, they engage with the campus community in many ways, advising and mentoring undergraduate students, participating in academic programs and panels, presenting their research, developing new courses and co-teaching with faculty members across disciplines.
The new Cotsen fellows of the 2020-23 cohort are:

Célia Abele

Neama Alamri
Maya Kronfeld, lecturer in the Humanities Council, the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program in Humanistic Studies. During her time at Princeton, Kronfeld plans to complete her book project, “Spontaneous Form: Four Studies in Consciousness and Philosophical Fiction,” which integrates literary studies with Kantian approaches to cognition. Her interests include English and French romanticism and modernism, philosophy of mind, and jazz studies. Kronfeld is also a professional jazz pianist. She completed her Ph.D. in comparative literature at the University of California-Berkeley.

Amanda Lanzillo

Aniruddhan Vasudevan
by The Office of Communications - Five scholars join Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts