UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Julie Park, assistant curator and faculty fellow at New York University Bobst Library’s Special Collections Center, has been named Penn State University Libraries’ Paterno Family Librarian for Literature with tenure, effective July 1.
“We are very pleased to welcome Dr. Park to Penn State and the University Libraries. Her expertise in English literature and her experience with rare books and manuscripts are ideally suited to the role of the Paterno Family Librarian for Literature,” Mihoko Hosoi, the University Libraries’ associate dean for Collections Research and Scholarly Communications, said. “Dr. Park’s extensive background and interdisciplinary research interests will benefit Penn State students and many other scholars of English literature and the humanities.”
Park is a scholar of 17th- and 18th-century England who works at the intersections of literary studies, material and visual culture and textual materiality, as noted on her website. She holds a doctorate and master of arts in English literature from Princeton University and a bachelor’s degree from Bryn Mawr College. She served on the English faculty of McMaster University and Vassar College before completing her Master of Library Information and Science degree from UCLA in 2019, concentrating on archival studies and rare books/print and visual culture.
Most recently, Park was awarded the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art Research Fellowship and the Bibliographical Society of America-American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Fellowship for Bibliographical Studies in the Eighteenth Century, both in 2021, and the 2020 Justin Winsor Library History Essay Award from the American Library Association. She also has completed long-term fellowships at the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Huntington Library. Park’s book "My Dark Room: Inner Life in Eighteenth-Century England" is scheduled to be published in 2022 by University of Chicago Press.
“The English Department is thrilled that Julie Park has accepted the position of Paterno Family Librarian for Literature. Park is the ideal person for such an appointment, and we cannot wait to start working with her,” John Marsh, acting department head, said.
The Paterno Family Librarian Endowment in Literature was endowed in 1998 through a gift from Joseph V. and Suzanne P. Paterno to provide leadership in building the literature collections at Penn State with a focus on excellence in English and American literature. The Paterno Family Librarian for Literature serves as a subject specialist for English literature by actively collaborating with collegiate faculty as well as University Libraries faculty and staff to foster quality in teaching, research and outreach for these disciplines.