Four Women Scholars Who Have Been Appointed to Endowed Professorships

Merve Gül Emre was appointed the Shapiro-Silverberg University Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. She was an associate professor of American literature at the University of Oxford in England. Earlier, she taught at McGill University in Montreal. Professor Emre is the author or editor of several books including Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America (University of Chicago Press, 2017) and The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing (Doubleday, 2018).

A native of Adana, Türkiye, Dr. Emre is a graduate of Harvard University, where he majored in government. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in English literature from Yale University.

Imani Perry was named the Henry A. Morss Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She was the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University in New Jersey. Professor Perry won the National Book Award in the nonfiction category in 2022 for her book South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation (Ecco Press, 2022).

Professor Perry is a graduate of Yale University, where she majored in literature and American studies. She earned a Ph.D. in American studies from Harvard University, a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School, and a master’s degree in law from Georgetown University.

Jhumpa Lahiri was named the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and director of the Creative Writing Program at Barnard College in New York City. She was a professor of creative writing at Princeton University in New Jersey. Professor Lahiri received the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for her short story collection Interpreter of Maladies (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000). She has also authored other story collections, novels, and nonfiction.

A native of London, Dr. Lahiri moved to the United States when she was a young girl. She is a graduate of Barnard College. Professor Lahiri holds a master’s degree in English, a master of fine arts degree in creative writing, a master’s degree in comparative literature, and a Ph.D. in Renaissance studies, all from Boston University.

Susan K. Serrano was appointed the Fred T. Korematsu Professor of Law and Social Justice at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa William S. Richardson School of Law. Professor Serrano serves as the law school’s director of faculty research and associate director of Ka Huli Ao Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law. She joined the law school’s faculty in 2006.

Prior to joining the law school, Professor Serrano was a staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco, California. She earned a juris doctorate at the University of Hawai’i.