Dean's Notebook - Christopher Celenza, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences

Dr. Christopher S. Celenza is the James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. He is also a professor of history and classics.

The James B. Knapp Dean of Arts and Sciences brings leadership and expertise to the tasks of shaping the Krieger School’s vision and managing its complex and extensive operations. The dean has responsibility for setting direction, generating and managing resources, and coordinating fundraising and alumni relations activities. The dean also authorizes all new appointments and plays an active role in recruiting prospective faculty.

Celenza oversees the Krieger School's 22 highly ranked academic departments within the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. He has made it a priority to foster diversity and inclusion. He also seeks to build on the school’s collaborative relationships, deepening support for scholars at every stage of their careers.

As a faculty member, his research interests include Latin literature and philosophy of the Italian Renaissance; late medieval intellectual history; the history of philosophy; the history of books and reading practices; Latin paleography; and the history of the classical tradition.

Dr. Earle Havens is Nancy H. Hall Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts, director of the Virginia Fox Stern Center for the History of the Book in the Renaissance, and an adjunct professor of modern languages and literature at Johns Hopkins University. His academic teaching and published scholarship focus on the history of the book and material texts in early modern Europe, from 1400 to 1750. 

Dr. Havens has authored, co-authored, and edited thirteen scholarly books and exhibition catalogues, and dozens of journal articles and book chapters, including Fakes, Lies, and Forgeries: Rare Books and Manuscripts from the Arthur and Janet Freeman Bibliotheca Fictiva Collection (Sheridan Libraries, 2014; 2nd ed. rev., 2016); and (with Walter Stephens, Literary Forgery in Early Modern Europe, 1450-1800 (JHU Press, 2018). He is currently co-editing several books, including with Mark Rankin, The Elizabethan Catholic Underground: Clandestine Printing and Scribal Subversion in the English Counter-Reformation (forthcoming with Brill); and with Erin Rowe and Kelsey Champagne, Women of the Book: The Spiritual Lives of Early Modern Women, 1450-1800 (forthcoming with the Pennsylvania State University Press). In Spring 2024 he once again taught his popular undergraduate seminar, “The History of Fake News from the Flood to the Apocalypse.”

Dr. Havens earned an interdisciplinary joint-PhD in Renaissance Studies and History from Yale University.