Dean of Faculty

December 5, 2024

Dear all,

It is my great pleasure to announce that Demetrius L. Eudell, PhD will be our new Dean of Faculty to begin July 1, 2025. I want to extend my heartfelt appreciation and admiration to the search committee without whom this could not have been accomplished: Professors Christopher Bjork, Patricia-Pia Célérier, Mary Ann Cunningham, José Perillán, and Marc Smith. They worked tirelessly to understand the needs of the Vassar community, review an enormous number of applicants, interview candidates and finalists, and recommend an exceptional person for this vital role in the College.

Professor Eudell joins us from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art where he is currently Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences. Professor Eudell is a historian, who earned his Doctor of Philosophy from Stanford University in 1997. He was on the faculty at Wesleyan University for more than twenty years prior to joining Cooper Union. Professor Eudell has been a full professor since 2011 and will join the History Department at Vassar with tenure at the full professor rank. As Dean of Social Sciences at Wesleyan, Professor Eudell chaired the Pedagogy Working Group during the COVID-19 pandemic and played a key role in launching the new College of Education. He also chaired the History Department, directed the Center of African American Studies, and served as Coordinator of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship.

Professor Eudell is an internationally renowned scholar. He has authored or co-authored several books and edited volumes including his most recent work forthcoming from Routledge in 2025: Black Intellectuals on the Imaginary and Actuality of Race in the Americas. He has published dozens of scholarly articles, reviews, and book chapters, which detail the experiences of Black people in the Americas as a constituent element of our contemporary globalized world. He also serves as Principal Investigator on a $1.1 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation “Humanities for All Times Initiative” which looks at the history of policing, race, and redevelopment in Connecticut. Professor Eudell has also offered a range of courses in intellectual, Black, and U.S. history from the early modern era stretching to the contemporary moment. In 2016, he was awarded Wesleyan’s Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching.

Professor Eudell has studied and worked internationally and speaks two languages in addition to English - German, French - and has also studied Spanish. He has extensive collaborations with colleagues at universities in Germany and participated in the activities funded by a major external grant from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) on the “Practices of Comparison.” He has presented his work and traveled to countries in Africa, Latin America, Europe, and South Asia.

At Vassar, Professor Eudell looks forward to supporting the faculty in their scholarly and educational pursuits, being a stalwart advocate for the liberal arts regionally, nationally, and globally, and becoming a part of the Poughkeepsie community. He will reside at the Dean of Faculty house on Dean’s Lane. We are so very lucky to welcome this exceptional scholar, educator, and human being to our community. Please join me in congratulating our next Dean of Faculty, Demetrius Eudell!

Elizabeth H. Bradley, President
Vassar College
Poughkeepsie, NY 12604
@EHBVassar