News from the Division of Languages and Literature

Daniel Mendelsohn, the Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities at Bard, has been awarded with the rank of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak on behalf of France. “It gives me great pleasure to hereby highlight your dedication in the service of culture, which holds such a special place in French people’s hearts,” wrote Malak. One of the primary distinctions from the four ministerial orders of the French Republic, this award is bestowed upon those who have distinguished themselves by their creativity in the cultural spheres, or by their support for the distribution of knowledge and works that form the wealth of French cultural heritage. 
  
Daniel Mendelsohn is an internationally bestselling author, critic, essayist, and translator. Born in New York City in 1960, he received degrees in Classics from the University of Virginia (MA) and Princeton (PhD). Aside from The Lost, which won the National Books Critics Circle Award and the National Jewish Book Award in the United States and the Prix Médicis in France, Mendelsohn’s books include: An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic (2017), named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Newsday, Library Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, and Kirkus; The Elusive Embrace (1999), a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year; three collections of essays; a scholarly study of Greek tragedy, Gender and the City in Euripides’ Political Plays (2002), and a two-volume translation of the poetry of C. P. Cavafy (2009), which included the first English translation of the poet’s “Unfinished Poems.” His tenth and most recent book, Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate, was published in September 2020, and he has just completed a translation of Homer’s Odyssey, to be published by University of Chicago Press in 2024.

The Order of Arts and Letters (L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres) was established in 1957 by the French Minister of Culture to reward individuals who have distinguished themselves by their creativity in the arts or literature or by the contribution they have made to the influence of arts and letters in France and worldwide. It consists of three ranks: Knight (Chevalier), Officer (Officier), and the highest honor, Commander (Commandeur). 

One of the most stunning aspects of writer and editor Richard Gottlieb’s career is the enormous number of books he has edited on a wide spectrum of subjects, writes James Romm, James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics, for Current. The sheer range in content that Gottlieb has edited—in some six or seven hundred books—speaks to a rare freedom that few book reviewers are allowed. “Most of us have a ‘beat,’ a subject with which we’re deeply familiar and on which we may have published books of our own,” Romm writes. “We’re called upon by an editor who has us on his or her list of those who can cover that beat.” In his view, this practice leaves little room for reviewers to explore new interests and evaluate works outside of the subjects they are traditionally assigned, resulting in the literary world largely lacking the perspectives of offbeat enthusiasts. “Rather than maintain lists of experts who cover specific beats,” he writes, “Perhaps we’d be better served if editors kept lists of writers who, like Gottlieb, can be interested in anything.”