Gennifer Weisenfeld named new dean of humanities

Gennifer Weisenfeld, professor in the department of art, art history and visual studies, has been appointed dean of the humanities in the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. 

Weisenfeld will begin her position July 1 and will serve through June 2019. She succeeds Richard Powell, who is also the John Spencer Bassett professor of art and art history. Powell completes his two-year term as dean in June.

“Gennifer is an accomplished scholar and an experienced administrator,” Dean of Trinity Valerie Ashby said Tuesday in a Duke Today release. “She is naturally a big picture thinker with deep roots in the humanities and this makes her such an excellent choice to represent the humanities departments.”

Weisenfeld has worked in the art, art history and visual studies department at Duke since 1998, and she has previously served as the department’s director of graduate studies for six years. She has also been a member of the executive committees for the graduate faculty and the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute.

Known for cross-disciplinary research on modern and contemporary Japanese art history, design and visual culture, Weisenfeld released a book in 2012 entitled “Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923” that examines visual culture in Japan. She is the author of two books and is currently writing a third. 

Weisenfeld holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University in addition to a B.A. from Wesleyan University. 

“I have tremendous admiration for my dedicated colleagues and that inspires me to invest in the humanities at Duke,” Weisenfeld said in the release. “It is an honor to become an advocate and facilitator for this rich community of scholars.”