Geoffrey Harpham has been president and director of the National Humanities Center since January 2003. Before that, he held teaching appointments at the University of Pennsylvania, Brandeis University, and Tulane University, where he was the Pierce Butler Professor of English. He has been awarded fellowships from the J. S. Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities (twice), and the American Council of Learned Societies. He is the author of eight books, most recently Shadows of Ethics: Criticism and the Just Society; Language Alone: The Critical Fetish of Modernity; and The Character of Criticism. Articles of his have appeared in Critical Inquiry, Representations, Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, Raritan, PMLA, Salmagundi, and many other journals.