We’re thrilled to welcome Gene Andrew Jarrett as the newest member of Princeton University Press’s Board of Trustees. An esteemed scholar of African American literature and literary history, the author and editor of numerous books, including two with PUP, and a recognized leader in advancing equity in higher education, Jarrett is Dean of the Faculty and William S. Tod Professor of English at Princeton University, a role he has held since 2021.
On Dean Jarrett’s appointment to PUP’s Board of Trustees, Press Director Christie Henry notes, “The expertise of the Board of Trustees, and their belief in the PUP mission, shapes our every endeavor. The opportunity to bring Gene Jarrett’s experience, insights, and leadership to this collective is incredibly exciting and for our team, a wonderful expansion of the collaborations we have already enjoyed with Gene as an author and inspiring University leader.”
Dean Jarrett’s previous books include Deans and Truants: Race and Realism in African American History, “an ambitious, engaging, and intelligent attempt to reconsider the relationship between African American literature and political history” (Studies in American Culture) and Representing the Race: A New Political History of African American Literature, which “inaugurated an entirely new approach to the subject of canon-formation in African American literature” (Henry Louis Gates, Jr.). His most recent book, published with Princeton University Press, is Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Life and Times of a Caged Bird, which was named a New Yorker Book of the Year and was one of Essence Magazine’s “Books We Can’t Wait to Read This Year.”
Dean Jarrett’s editorial work includes the two volume Wiley-Blackwell Anthology of African American Literature; The Collected Novels of Paul Laurence Dunbar and The Complete Stories of Paul Laurence Dunbar; and Claude McKay’s 1937 autobiography, A Long Way Home. He is also the founding editor-in-chief of the online module Oxford Bibliographies in African American Studies and the founding editor of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African American Literature, both published by Oxford University Press.
In addition to his formidable work as an author and editor, Dean Jarrett served on the Association of American Universities’ Advisory Board for Racial Equity in Higher Education, which worked to address racial inequities on campus and structural barriers to academic success. He also won fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the American Council of Learned Societies.
Prior to joining Princeton, where he earned an AB in English, later receiving an AM and PhD in English from Brown University, Dean Jarrett was Seryl Kushner Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of English at New York University; a professor in the Department of English and Program in African American Studies at Boston University, where he chaired the English Department and later served as Associate Dean of the Faculty for the Humanities; and a faculty member in the English Department at the University of Maryland, College Park.
We’re honored and delighted to have Gene Jarrett’s affiliation with PUP continue, extending from author to Board of Trustees member. We look forward to working together and learning from him in the years ahead.