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Amanda Claybaugh Named Professor of English at Harvard
Cambridge, Mass. - February 2, 2010 - Amanda Claybaugh, an expert on 19th-century novels and on reformist writings from both the U.S. and abroad, has been named professor of English at Harvard University, effective July 1, 2010.
Claybaugh is currently associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University, where she has been on the faculty since 2001.
"Professor Claybaugh's work is situated at one of the most interesting areas of literary study today, where critical debate about how to 'place' American literature continues to propel innovative scholarship," says Diana Sorensen, dean of arts and humanities in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences. "Her peers note not only the breadth and reach of her interests, but also her ability to expand, transform, and supply new perspectives even in a much-studied field. Her record at Columbia confirms a stellar reputation as a teacher."
Claybaugh has received teaching awards at both Harvard and Columbia: While a graduate student at Harvard, she received the Derek Bok Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1996 and 1997, and Columbia awarded her its Presidential Teaching Prize in 2004, making her the first junior faculty member ever to win this honor. She has also authored numerous reviews in the London Review of Books.
Claybaugh's 2007 monograph The Novel of Purpose: Literature and Social Reform in the Anglo-American World (Cornell Press) argues that the 19th-century novel was shaped by the writings of social reformers, becoming a "novel of purpose" that sought to shape readers, and by extension the world. Citing novelists who adopted a reformist style of writing even though personally uninterested in social reform -- among them Anne Brontė, George Eliot, Henry James, and Mark Twain -- Claybaugh maintains that in adopting new strategies for realistic writing, novelists of the era created a new, distinctly Anglo-American realism. The Novel of Purpose won the 2008 Sonya Rudikoff Prize for the Best First Book in Victorian studies.
Claybaugh is currently at work on a book about the literature of the Reconstruction era (1865-1877), contending that writings such as travel journals from northern reporters, memoirs of Freedmen's Bureau agents and freedmen's school teachers, and historical novels constitute a sustained debate about the proper scope and function of government, a debate that continues to this day. Reconstruction reshaped both national and state governments, shifting some powers between the two and giving both entirely new powers. Claybaugh says Reconstruction-era writings reflect how these changes were perceived and understood by ordinary citizens, providing a vivid look at how government was viewed by the populace during this time of great change.
Claybaugh earned her B.A. from Yale University in 1993, followed by an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard in 1996 and 2001, respectively. She joined Columbia as an assistant professor in 2001, becoming associate professor in 2007. She was a visiting associate professor at Harvard in 2007 and 2008.
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