University faculty members Basile Baudez, Margot Canaday, and Tamsen Wolff have been named recipients of the 2025-2028 Sophie and L. Edward Cotsen Faculty Fellowship, an honor recognizing excellence in undergraduate teaching and scholarship. The fellowship, established in 1990 through a gift from Lloyd Cotsen ’50, awards $5,000 per year to each fellow.
The recipients were nominated by the chairs of their respective departments, and recently received official notification of their selection.
Professor Basile Baudez, an associate professor in the Department of Art and Archaeology, has been working at the University for seven years. Reflecting on the fellowship, Baudez emphasized its broader significance.
“I don’t take it as a personal-only reward, but for the department,” he said.
Baudez plans to use the fellowship to develop new undergraduate offerings, including Art Visualization 101, an “intro survey class that addresses art history and the practice of art.” He also hopes to launch courses related to “animal studies and non-human animals and architecture and art.” Baudez said that the Cotsen Fellowship will assist in the department’s abilities to create new classes and assist in developing undergraduate research.
Baudez is currently researching the history of carceral architecture, with a particular focus on New Jersey prisons. Separately, he is investigating “the role of textiles in urban studies in cities through the example of Venice,” he told the ‘Prince.’
Professor Margot Canaday, the Dodge Professor of History and a faculty member since 2008, intends to use the fellowship to design three new courses rooted in her research interests. Her most recent book, “Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America,” was published in 2023.
The first course Canaday is developing is an intellectual history of feminism that examines figures ranging from Mary Wollstonecraft to contemporary theorists such as Judith Butler and Amia Srinivasan. Canaday told the ‘Prince’ that she is also working to develop a 200-level methods course on queer archives, where students will engage with the “challenges of trying to find queer history in the archives” and develop “a guide that other students could use in their independent work on that subject.” The third course she discussed was a labor history course — “a seminar history of the workplace [from the] pre-industrial era to the gig economy.”
“I’m very gratified to work for an institution that is both a major research university but also really values undergraduate teaching,” Canaday commented.
Canady has yet to finalize her next major project, but said that the fellowship offers space to think deeply about potential research projects. “I’m taking this moment … to just kind of read widely and think about what [my project] might be,” she told the ‘Prince.’
Professor Tamsen Wolff of the English Department was not available to comment by the time of publication.
Wolff has been a part of Princeton’s faculty for twenty-four years. An associate professor of English, she specializes in modern and contemporary drama and performance, gender studies, cultural studies, voice, directing, and dramaturgy.
Wolff’s debut novel, “Juno’s Swans,” was published in 2018. She has also authored “Mendel’s Theatre: Heredity, Eugenics, and Early Twentieth-Century American Drama,” a book on “the complex role of heredity and hereditary theory in the emergence of modern American drama.”
Both Baudez and Canaday stated that the University has played a significant role in their careers and supported them to travel and research their interests.
“Princeton has … [been] extremely generous in terms of both time that they allow faculty to do research and then monetary support that enables us to travel, go to archives all over the place, be in communication with other colleagues in other parts of the country,” Canady said.
Baudez said that the University has helped through providing "financial and time support."
“[That’s] the kind of intensive support that I think really makes a difference of how deeply you can delve [into research],” Canady added.
David Yun is a News contributor for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com
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