Culler

Cornell professor Jonathan Culler was recently elected chair of the board of directors of the New York Council for the Humanities. Culler has served on the organization’s board since 2007 and will continue to be instrumental in the support and funding of public humanities programming across New York state.

“Jonathan’s peers chose him because of his distinguished contributions to the humanities as well as for his many services to the council,” Sara Ogger, the council’s executive director, said in a news release. “Within our national community of scholars and public humanities experts, the news has been extremely well received.”

Established in 1975 as a partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the council is based in New York City and provides public humanities opportunities reaching more than 1 million New Yorkers a year. The board participates in decisions to award about 100 grants each year to small- and medium-sized nonprofits in communities statewide.

Among its initiatives, the council provides two Public Humanities Fellowships to Cornell doctoral candidates each year, through a partnership with Cornell’s Society for the Humanities. The fellowships are funded through an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant and support from the Whiting Foundation and the Daniel and Joanna Rose Fund.

Culler, the Class of 1916 Professor of English and Comparative Literature, began teaching at Cornell in 1977. A highly regarded scholar of literary theory, his books have been translated into 26 languages and include “On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism After Structuralism” (1982), “Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction” (1997) and “Theory of the Lyric” (2015). He directed the Society for the Humanities from 1984 to 1993, and currently serves as secretary of the American Council of Learned Societies.

Also serving on the council’s current board are Philip Lewis, professor emeritus of French literature and former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Shawkat Toorawa, associate professor of Arabic literature and Near Eastern studies from 2000 to 2016.