Amanda Irwin Wilkins Photo: Denise Applewhite
Amanda Irwin Wilkins has been appointed director of the Princeton Writing Program.
Irwin Wilkins has worked with the writing program in a variety of capacities since 1999, and has served as interim director since September 2009. The program offers more than 100 writing seminars a year for freshmen on a variety of special topics to provide intensive instruction in college-level inquiry and arguments.
"Her outstanding teaching skills, deep familiarity with the best practices in writing pedagogy and significant administrative experience give her the broad range of skills required to ensure that the Princeton Writing Program remains one of the finest programs in the nation," said Deputy Dean of the College Peter Quimby, to whom Irwin Wilkins reports.
For several years, Irwin Wilkins served as associate director of the writing program with responsibility for the Writing Center, which offers Princeton students one-on-one conferences with experienced writers. She led the center during a dramatic expansion, when it went from seven graduate tutors to a staff of roughly 60 undergraduate and graduate fellows. She also developed a comprehensive program for preparing and supporting fellows, established popular "dissertation boot camps" for graduate students, and created a scheduling and tracking system now in use in writing centers around the country.
Irwin Wilkins has taught writing seminars on "The Meaning of Home" and "Modern Memory," both of which draw on her research into how writers imagine war from the home front and navigate the aftermath of collective and individual trauma.
Irwin Wilkins received her B.A. from Haverford College and her Ph.D. in comparative literature from Princeton in 2005. She succeeds Kerry Walk, who became associate dean of the faculty at Pitzer College.
