Writers Receive Humanities Medal

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein *77

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Images

Two writers who teach — JHUMPA LAHIRI, who joined Princeton’s creative-writing program this summer, and REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN *77, a novelist and professor — were among 10 recipients of the National Humanities Medal Sept. 10 at the White House.

Lahiri, a writer of essays, short stories, and novels, was praised by President Barack Obama for portraying “the Indian American experience in beautifully wrought narratives of estrangement and belonging.” A Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction, she is teaching a course in advanced fiction this fall.

Goldstein, a 1996 MacArthur Fellow, was cited for “bringing philosophy into conversation with culture. In scholarship, Dr. Goldstein has elucidated the ideas of Spinoza and Gödel, while in fiction, she deploys wit and drama to help us understand the great human conflict between thought and feeling.” Her most recent book was Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away.