Josephine Nock-Hee Park Named Associate Dean for Arts and Letters

Josephine Nock-Hee Park, School of Arts and Sciences President’s Distinguished Professor of English, will become Associate Dean for Arts and Letters in the School of Arts and Sciences, effective January 1, 2025.

In this role, Park will oversee the School’s humanities departments, including Africana Studies; Cinema and Media Studies; Classical Studies; East Asian Languages and Civilizations; English; Francophone, Italian, and Germanic Studies; History; History of Art; Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures; Music; Philosophy; Religious Studies; Russian and East European Studies; South Asia Studies; and Spanish and Portuguese. She will also oversee the School’s humanities research centers.

A scholar of modern and contemporary American literature and culture, with a focus on American poetry and Asian American literature, Park served two terms as Director of the Asian American Studies Program. She is also Chair of the Committee on Undergraduate Education and was a member of the Presidential Commission on Countering Hate and Building Community. In addition, she serves on the executive committee of the Kim Center for Korean Studies and as co-chair of the advisory board of the Sachs Program in Arts Innovation.

Park was awarded the Ira Abrams Award for Distinguished Teaching, the School’s highest teaching honor, in 2019, and is the recipient of multiple David Delaura Teaching Awards, sponsored by the English Undergraduate Advisory Board, and the Kahn Award for Outstanding Teaching by an Assistant Professor.

Park will succeed Jeffrey Kallberg, who is transitioning to the role of Interim Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences after having served as Associate Dean for Arts and Letters since July 2010.

“Jeff has made great strides in strengthening our humanities programs,” says Steven J. Fluharty, Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences and Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Professor of Psychology, Pharmacology, and Neuroscience. “Given Jo’s exemplary record as a scholar, educator, and academic leader, I have every confidence she will make an outstanding successor.”

Park’s scholarly works include the award-winning Apparitions of Asia: Modernist Form and Asian American Poetics, and she has served on the editorial boards of numerous multidisciplinary journals.