Professor Jennifer Natalya Fink receives President’s Award for Distinguished Scholar-Teachers

Jennifer Natalya Fink, a white woman with black hair, is pictured in a black blouse with her left hand under her chin.

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The department is thrilled to announce that Professor Fink has received the President’s Award for Distinguished Scholar-Teachers . These awards recognize faculty members who have made an extraordinary impact on our community through the integration of ambitious scholarship and dynamic student engagement. 

Jennifer Natalya Fink serves as Professor in the Department of English and core faculty in the Program in Disability Studies. An award-winning novelist, theorist, and playwright specializing in feminist, queer, and crip studies, Professor Fink joined the University in 2004. Dr. Fink’s innovative work explores wide-ranging topics while crossing and redefining multiple genres. She is the author of seven published books, including two works of non-fiction and five of fiction. Her novel Bhopal Dance, which won the Catherine Doctorow Prize for Innovative Fiction, was widely hailed as groundbreaking in its reframing of the Bhopal disaster to examine our present crises. Her other novels are similarly acclaimed. Dr. Fink’s latest nonfiction work, All Our Families: Disability Lineage and the Future of Kinship (Beacon, 2022), creates a new paradigm for ending ableism and redefining kinship by reclaiming our disability lineages. Her play Bitter Flower, which explores racism and classism in the fight for women’s suffrage, was adapted into an online film, selected for several festivals, and staged at Georgetown. Dr. Fink’s range of expertise and facility across diverse subject areas has made her a sought-after speaker, performer, and teacher. In the classroom, she is a dynamic educator, investing in and supporting students’ academic interests and success in interdisciplinary courses. She has advised numerous honors and graduate theses, led the English Honors Program, directed the Program in Disability Studies, mentored countless students, designed interdisciplinary courses, and launched the Disability Studies MA/Ph.D. Certificate. Professor Fink is widely regarded for her tireless dedication to advocacy, accessibility in the classroom, and for fostering an inclusive environment.

More information about the award and this year’s recipients can be found in The Hoya‘s “Three Professors Receive 2023 Distinguished Scholar-Teachers Awards” .

Congratulations, Professor Fink!

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