Brian Reed, Professor of Comparative Literature, current Chair of the Department of English and Milliman Endowed Chair in the Humanities, will be the next Dean of the Humanities Division for a five-year term beginning July 1, 2018. He will succeed Professor Michael Shapiro, who will be stepping down from his position and retiring from the University at the end of the current academic year.
Brian Reed is an internationally recognized authority on American poetry, especially contemporary poetry. The author of three books, most recently “Nobody’s Business: Twenty-First Century Avant-Garde Poetics” (2013), he has also published more than forty articles and book chapters on modern and contemporary poetry. He has three more books in preparation, including “A Sovereign Devotion: On Song, Sex, and Power from Mozart to Monteverdi.” He chairs the Executive Committee of the MLA’s Forum on Poetry and Poetics, serves on the Executive Committee of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, and is the Editor (Poetry) for the journal “Contemporary Literature.” A Rhodes Scholar and a Fulbright Scholar, in 2018 he also delivered the Solomon Katz Distinguished Lecture in the Humanities here at UW. He is deeply committed to the importance of the work of the Humanities Division, and I very much look forward to working with him in the years ahead.