Gauss Seminars in Criticism, The

Gauss Seminars in Criticism, The, named in honor of Dean Christian Gauss, were instituted in 1949 to provide a focus for discussion, study, and the exchange of ideas in the humanities.

Normally five or six seminars are held annually. Each seminar is conducted by an invited guest, who presents material upon which he is working or which seems to him significant, at from two to six weekly meetings. Past seminar leaders have included W. H. Auden, Noam Chomsky, Leon Edel, Jacques Maritain, Sean O'Faolain, Sir Herbert Read, Paul Tillich, Ren� Wellek, and Edmund Wilson. Some twenty-five or thirty persons, invited from the University Faculty, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the community at large, participate in each seminar.

The Seminars are arranged by an interdepartmental committee, one of whose members serves as director. Serving in this capacity have been Professors Francis Fergusson (1949-52), E.B.O. Borgerhoff (1952-57, 1965-66), Richard P. Blackmur (1957-65), and since 1966, Joseph N. Frank.

From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton University Press (1978).