Board approves six faculty appointments

The Princeton University Board of Trustees has approved the appointment of six faculty members, including three full professors and three assistant professors.

Professor

Lorgia García Peña, in the Effron Center for the Study of America and the Department of African American Studies, specializes in race and colonialism and Afro-Latinx studies. Her appointment is effective July 1.

García Peña comes to Princeton from Tufts University, where she was the Mellon Professor in Studies of Race, Colonialism and Diaspora since 2021. Previously, she was a faculty member at Harvard, where she served as assistant professor from 2013-17 and as the Roy G. Clouse Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of History and Literature from 2017-21. She was an assistant professor at the University of Georgia from 2010-13.

She is the author of “Community as Rebellion: A Syllabus for Surviving Academia as a Woman of Color” (Haymarket, 2022), “Translating Blackness: Migrations of Latinx Colonialities in Global Perspective” (Duke University Press, 2022) and “The Borders of Dominicanidad: Race, Nation, and Archives of Contradiction” (Duke University Press, 2016).

García Peña is the winner of the 2017 National Women’s Studies Association Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize, the 2016 Latino/a Studies Book Award, and the 2016 Isis Duarte Book Prize in Haitian and Dominican Studies. She was named a 2021 Freedom Scholar by the Marguerite Casey Foundation.

García Peña earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Rutgers University and a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan.

Ilya Kaminsky, in the Lewis Center for the Arts, specializes in creative writing. His appointment is effective Jan. 16.

Most recently, Kaminsky was the Margaret T. and Henry C. Bourne, Jr. Chair in Poetry and professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, as well as the director of the Poetry@Tech Program.

In spring 2019, Kaminsky served as the Irving Bacheller Chair in Creative Writing at Rollins College. From 2006-18, he taught at San Diego State University, being named an associate professor in 2009 and a full professor in 2012. While at San Diego State, he was editor in chief of Poetry International. He served as director of the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute of the Poetry Foundation from 2010-13, and as the Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Iowa in 2011.

Kaminsky is the author of numerous books including the upcoming “Silent City” (Graywolf Press, 2024), “Deaf Republic” (Graywolf Press, 2019) and “Dancing in Odessa” (Tupelo Press, 2004). He also has edited many anthologies and books series.

He is a recipient of the Pushcart Prize (2012 and 2021), Los Angeles Times Book Prize (2020), Ainsfield Wolf Book Award (2020) and National Jewish Book Award (2019). He was named a finalist for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, T.S. Eliot Prize and Forward Prize (2019) and has received other notable honors including the Carnegie Corporation’s “Great Immigrants/Great Americans” Citation (2021).

Kaminsky is a Guggenheim Fellow (2018) and has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, MacDowell Colony and Virginia Center for Creative Arts.

He earned a B.A. from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from University of California-Hastings College of the Law. He completed graduate-level coursework in English literature and creative writing at University of Rochester and George Mason University.

Jacob Nebel, in philosophy, specializes in normative ethics and the theory of value. His appointment is effective Jan. 1.

Nebel has served as an assistant professor at the University of Southern California since 2019. He is the author of more than a dozen journal articles.

He is a 2013 Princeton graduate with an A.B. degree in philosophy and is a recipient of the Phi Beta Kappa Student Prize, Moses Taylor Pyne Honor Prize, McCosh Senior Thesis Prize, Dickinson Senior Thesis Prize and Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence.

Nebel earned a BPhil at the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. at New York University.

Assistant Professor

Parastoo Abtahi, in computer science, specializes in human-computer interaction. She earned a B.A.Sc. from University of Toronto and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Yonatan Glazer-Eytan, in history, specializes in modern European history and early modern Spain. He earned a B.A. and M.A. at Tel Aviv University and a Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University.

Alex Lombardi, in computer science, specializes in cryptography. He earned a B.A. and M.A. at Harvard University and a Ph.D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.