Press Kit

Gene Andrew Jarrett is a scholar, professor, and university administrator. Presently, he is Dean of the Faculty and William S. Tod Professor of English at Princeton University. 

Before his current role at Princeton, Jarrett was Seryl Kushner Dean of the College of Arts and Science and Professor of English at New York University from 2017 to 2021. Prior to that, he worked at Boston University, where he was a professor jointly appointed in the Department of English and the Program in African American Studies; he also served as Chair of the English Department from 2011 to 2014 and Associate Dean of the Faculty for the Humanities from 2014 to 2017. He began his academic career as an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park; he worked there from 2002 to 2007. 

Jarrett is the author of two books on African American literary studies and the editor of eight additional books of African American literature and literary criticism. His third authored book, Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Life and Times of a Caged Bird, a comprehensive biography of the legendary African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, is slated for release from Princeton University Press in 2022, coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the poet’s birth. Jarrett is also the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Bibliographies module on African American Studies, published by Oxford University Press. For this scholarly work, he has won awards and distinguished fellowships such as from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Born and raised in New York City, Jarrett earned his AB in English from Princeton University and his AM and PhD in English from Brown University.