Dear Campus Community,
Following a national search, we are pleased to announce that Sara Guyer has been appointed dean of Arts and Humanities in the College of Letters & Science, effective Sept. 1, 2021. Sara joins us from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she is Dorothy Puestow Draheim Professor of English and Jewish Studies. She currently serves as president of the international Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes and as director of the World Humanities Report.
This appointment is a homecoming for Sara, as she earned a master's and a doctoral degree from UC Berkeley, both in Rhetoric. She also earned a master's degree from the University of Warwick and a bachelor's degree in English and American Literature and European Cultural Studies from Brandeis University. Prior to her current leadership roles, she served as director of the Center for the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for over a decade.
Having spent her entire career at public universities, Sara has a deep understanding of our unwavering commitment to academic excellence in the context of social transformation and the importance of a strong research mission. She has a proven track record of advocating for the humanities both through fundraising and innovation.
Sara's research focuses on romantic literature and its legacies to show the importance of lyric poetry for thinking about contemporary conditions including genocide, statelessness, and climate change. She is the author of Romanticism after Auschwitz and reading with John Clare and co-editor of three collected volumes. She also coedits Lit Z, a book series that publishes new critical work and work-in-translation informed by romanticism. More recently, Sara lectured in the U.S. and internationally on the public and global humanities. You can learn more about Sara on the Letters & Science website.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank the search committee for their efforts in the search process, and to express our gratitude to outgoing Dean Anthony Cascardi for his many years of leadership and service to Arts and Humanities. Please join us in welcoming Sara to the UC Berkeley campus and in supporting her success in the college.
Sincerely,
Carol T. Christ
Chancellor
A. Paul Alivisatos
Executive Vice Chancellor & Provost