As you probably know, Dean Nan Sussman has announced that she will step down as Dean of the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, effective at the end of the summer, to return to her tenured faculty position in the Department of Psychology. As a consequence, the Division will have an Interim Dean for the year 2017-2018, while a national search is conducted for Dean Sussman’s permanent successor. In making this announcement, I want to recognize and thank Nan for the outstanding leadership she has given to the Division over the past four-plus years.
Following consultation with a number of department chairs and other senior faculty members in HSS, I am delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Gerry Milligan, Chair of the Department of World Languages and Literatures, to serve as Interim Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences for the academic year 2017-2018. Gerry is well known to many across the College since he has been a member of the CSI faculty since 2003, and has been serving since 2013 as Chair of his department. In the past several years, he has participated actively on many committees and task forces, including the General Education Committee, the Verrazano School Faculty Committee, the New Student Orientation Committee, the Curriculum Committee, and the Research Committee. He has also led Study Abroad programs in Florence, Italy.
Gerry received his BA from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and his MA and PhD in Italian from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with specializations in Renaissance Studies, Theatre, and Gender Studies. During the academic year 2007-2008, he held a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard’s Center for Renaissance Studies, Villa I Tatti. An accomplished scholar with a primary research focus on the Discourse of Masculinity in the Italian Renaissance, Gerry has published a co-edited book, The Poetics of Masculinity in Early Modern Italy and Spain, as well as several articles and book chapters, and has another book, Moral Combat: Women, Gender, and War in Italian Renaissance Literature, forthcoming from the University of Toronto Press.
The Division of Humanities and Social Sciences and CSI are very fortunate that Gerry Milligan has agreed to assume the role of Interim Dean so that the Division can continue the momentum it has gained during the years of Nan Sussman’s leadership. He will assume his interim duties on August 1, 2017. Please join me in congratulating him and wishing him great success in the year ahead.
