{{Short description|American academic}} '''Amanda Anderson''' is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities and English<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |url=https://news.brown.edu/new-faculty/2012-13/amanda-anderson |title=New Faculty 2012-13 &#124; News from Brown |access-date=2012-09-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180112221924/https://news.brown.edu/new-faculty/2012-13/amanda-anderson |archive-date=2018-01-12 |url-status=dead }}</ref> and Director of the Cogut Institute for the Humanities at Brown University.<ref name="Coelho">{{cite news|last1=Coelho|first1=Courtney|title=Anderson to direct Cogut Center for the Humanities|url=https://news.brown.edu/articles/2014/12/anderson|accessdate=5 January 2016|publisher=Brown University|date=17 December 2014}}</ref> She is a literary scholar and theorist who has written on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and culture as well as on contemporary debates in literary and cultural theory.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://vivo.brown.edu/display/asa1|title=Anderson, Amanda|website=vivo.brown.edu|language=en|access-date=2018-01-11}}</ref>

==Career== Anderson received her Ph.D. in English from Cornell University.

She taught at the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign from 1989 until 1999 when she joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University. She was Caroline Donovan Professor of English Literature from 2002 to 2012 and the head of the English department from 2003 to 2009.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://english.jhu.edu/profiles/aanderson.html|title=JHU &#124; English - People Directory - Amanda Anderson|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20080916040021/http://english.jhu.edu/profiles/aanderson.html|archivedate=2008-09-16|url-status=dead|accessdate=2010-02-14}}</ref>

She was appointed Senior Fellow at the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University and served as Director of the School from 2008 until 2014, when she was appointed Honorary Senior Fellow.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://sct.cornell.edu/senior-fellows/|title=Senior Fellows {{!}} The School of Criticism and Theory|website=sct.cornell.edu|language=en-US|access-date=2018-01-11}}</ref>

In 2012, she joined the faculty at Brown University as Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities and English.<ref name=":0" /> In 2015, she was appointed as Director of the Cogut Center for the Humanities.<ref name=Coelho /> The center was elevated to an institute in 2017.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.brown.edu/academics/humanities/|title=Home {{!}} Cogut Institute for the Humanities|website=www.brown.edu|language=en|access-date=2018-01-11}}</ref>

At the institute, she developed the Collaborative Humanities Initiative, which sponsors a doctoral certificate in Collaborative Humanities. She has anchored the co-taught capstone course of the certificate, a Project Development Workshop, since 2019. The certificate and capstone course draw doctoral students from across the humanities and the humanistic social sciences. In her role as director she has also served on the advisory board of the international Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes since 2017.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://vivo.brown.edu/display/asa1 | title=Anderson, Amanda }}</ref>

She delivered the Clarendon Lectures at the University of Oxford in November 2015 under the title “Psyche and Ethos”.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/clarendon-lectures|title=Clarendon Lectures {{!}} Faculty of English|website=www.english.ox.ac.uk|language=en|access-date=2018-01-11}}</ref> They were published in book form by Oxford University Press in 2018.<ref>https://academic.oup.com/book/6632</ref>

From 2020–2023, she hosted the Cogut Institute’s podcast series “Meeting Street: Conversations in the Humanities.” The show features scholars speaking about a broad array of topics in the humanities, including environmental humanities, AI and big data, disability studies, critical university studies, and collaborative projects in mental health, virtual reality, happiness studies, and Black studies.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://vivo.brown.edu/display/asa1 | title=Anderson, Amanda }}</ref>

==Awards==

* 2022 Presidential Award Lecture, Brown University<ref>https://president.brown.edu/lecture-series/presidential-faculty-award-lecture-recipients</ref> * 2020 John B. Birkelund Fellow in the Humanities, American Academy in Berlin<ref>https://www.americanacademy.de/person/amanda-anderson/</ref> * 2019–2020 Berlin Prize, American Academy in Berlin<ref>https://vivo.brown.edu/docs/a/asa1_cv.pdf?dt=051811026 </ref> * 2014–present Honorary Senior Fellow, School of Criticism and Theory<ref>https://vivo.brown.edu/docs/a/asa1_cv.pdf?dt=051811026 </ref> *2009 Guggenheim Fellowship<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.gf.org/fellows/16559-amanda-anderson |title=Amanda Anderson - John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation |accessdate=2010-02-14 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110622010852/http://www.gf.org/fellows/16559-amanda-anderson |archivedate=2011-06-22 }}</ref> * 2008 Ward Phillips Lectures, University of Notre Dame, March 2008<ref>https://vivo.brown.edu/docs/a/asa1_cv.pdf?dt=051811026 </ref> * 2006–2007 Magnet Scholar, Human Rights Institute, University of Connecticut<ref>https://vivo.brown.edu/docs/a/asa1_cv.pdf?dt=051811026 </ref> * 2006–2014 Senior Fellow, School of Criticism and Theory<ref>https://vivo.brown.edu/docs/a/asa1_cv.pdf?dt=051811026 </ref>

== Work == Much of Anderson’s scholarship and teaching have centered on nineteenth-century literature and the relation between forms of modern thought and knowledge and understandings of selfhood, social life, and ethics, but increasingly she also focuses broadly on the nature of argumentation and discourse. In ''The Way We Argue Now'', she analyzes a number of influential contemporary theoretical debates, with special attention to the forms of argument that shape work in pragmatism, feminism, cosmopolitanism, and proceduralism.

In her 2012 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34vcauDYtho TedxBrownUniversity talk], she reflects on the “distinctive value of the humanities” and argues that the humanities “open one up to an appreciation and an understanding of the centrality of the questions of value to the human experience.”<ref>{{Citation|last=TEDx Talks|title=Practicing the Humanities: Amanda Anderson at TEDxBrownUniversity|date=2012-11-21|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34vcauDYtho&t=11m18s|accessdate=2018-03-10}}</ref> After Max Weber, she describes the humanities as engaged in a labor of “clarification”: “in assessing works in the humanities, one comes to a better understanding of what one values and how given what one values one can make any number of practical and ethical decisions.”<ref>{{Citation|last=TEDx Talks|title=Practicing the Humanities: Amanda Anderson at TEDxBrownUniversity|date=2012-11-21|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34vcauDYtho&t=13m|accessdate=2018-03-10}}</ref>

==Bibliography== * ''Tainted Souls and Painted Faces: The Rhetoric of Fallenness in Victorian Culture'' Cornell University Press, 1993, {{ISBN|978-0-8014-2781-7}} * {{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5vJFU-KPAqsC&q=Amanda+Anderson| title=The Powers of Distance: Cosmopolitanism and the Cultivation of Detachment| publisher=Princeton University Press| year= 2001| isbn= 978-0-691-07497-9 }} * {{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NwyMh58Sq1cC&q=Amanda+Anderson| title=Disciplinarity at the Fin de Siècle|editor=Amanda Anderson |editor2=Joseph Valente| publisher=Princeton University Press| year= 2002| isbn= 978-0-691-08962-1 }} * {{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ir3l4hUrgLcC&q=Amanda+Anderson| title=The Way We Argue Now| publisher=Princeton University Press| year= 2006| isbn=978-0-691-11404-0 }} * Amanda Anderson and Harry E. Shaw, eds. ''[https://www.wiley.com/en-us/A+Companion+to+George+Eliot-p-9780470655993 A Companion to George Eliot]''. Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. {{ISBN|978-0-470-65599-3}}. * ''[http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo14168334.html Bleak Liberalism]''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. {{ISBN|978-0-226-92352-9}}. * ''[https://global.oup.com/academic/product/psyche-and-ethos-9780198755821?cc=us&lang=en&# Psyche and Ethos: Moral Life After Psychology]''. Oxford University Press, 2018. {{ISBN|9780198755821}} * Amanda Anderson, Rita Felski, and Toril Moi. ''[https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo42935471.html Character: Three Inquiries in Literary Studies]''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. {{ISBN|978-0-226-65866-7}}. * Amanda Anderson and Simon During. ''[https://global.oup.com/academic/product/humanities-theory-9780198918783 Humanities Theory]''. Oxford University Press, 2026, {{ISBN|9780198918783}}.

==References== {{reflist}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Anderson, Amanda}} Category:Cornell University alumni Category:Living people Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Brown University faculty