The school year has ended and next fall many professors will be packing their bags and leaving behind their Metrocards for the greener pastures of other universities — Yale, in particular, seems to be popular among Columbia’s professorial population. (Another way professors are just like us!) Bwog’s rounded up some arrivals and departures of your beloved faculty, but let us know who we missed and we’ll update the post. 

David Kastan, the chair of the English Department and Edward Said Professor of English and Comparative Literature is heading to New Haven. 

Noam Elcott will be joining the Art History Department as an assistant professor. Bonus fun fact: Elcott was The Blue and White’s first moder editor (in 1998), following its 100 year hiatus. 

Also heading to Yale is the Music Department’s Brian Kane, who was at CU for a post-doctorate teaching fellowship.

Owen Gutfreund, responding to the University’s decision not to grant him tenure, announced in January that he was uncertain whether he would remain at Columbia (as an associate professor of urban studies and director of BC/CU Urban Studies Programs) after this spring. A quick glance at the course directory reveals that Gutfreund will not be teaching any Fall 2008 classes.

Lit Hum lecturer Jill Muller did not receive a contract renewal

Say goodbye to Annalies Wouters of Classics

Another loss for the Music Department as Ruth Rosenberg heads to the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Professor of Political Science Thomas Pogge is headed to Yale’s Philosophy Department (if you’re keeping score, that’s three for Yale).

Philosophy professor and YouTube user Christia Mercer is taking a sabbatical, as is Bwog’s inamorato, the Abelard to our Heloise, the Antony to our Cleopatra, English and Comp. Lit professor Bruce Robbins. 

Next school year marks the beginning of Barnard’s hunger-striking Professor of Political Science Dennis Dalton‘s retirement.

Philosophy professors/married persons Patricia and Philip Kitcher return from sabbatical, the later of whom will be teaching Michael Seidel’s Joyce course in the fall.

In which an anonymous Bwog contributor tells us what else happened the evening of October 4th.

As protestors marched around Lerner Hall last Wednesday evening, a very different showdown was taking shape across campus in Schermerhorn Hall.  The Art History Underground, Columbia’s nascent (and, judging by their president’s introduction, quite enthusiastic) art history club had invited four of the department’s biggest guns to square off over the question “What Is Art History?” in a roundtable discussion moderated by Gothic architecture professor Stephen Murray.   

Murray, a specialist in the use of digital media in art historical research (he’s responsible for the dramatic – some students sporting a hangover have claimed vomit-inducing – 360º views of Amiens Cathedral in Art Humanities, beseeched the audience to turn the evening’s festivities into electronic communication, “blogging, if you will.”  Stirred by his exhortations, Bwog, ever the art history fan, could not resist the will to share what transpired over the next ninety minutes.  

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Our, um, highest congratulations to the art history department, who have installed a coffee machine in a lounge in Schermerhorn. They’ve circulated the news like it’s the birth of the Messiah. Or something.

And they’re going to charge!?

Read the gospel email after the jump.

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