hilary.fink@yale.edu
(203) 432-0520
Branford College — J13
74 High St. New Haven, CT 06511
Hilary Fink, PhD, is the Dean of Branford College. Dean Fink received her Ph.D. in Russian Literature from Columbia University in 1996. In her fourteen years at Yale in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, she has been an Assistant and Associate Professor, Director of Undergraduate Studies for both the Slavic Department and the Russian and East European Studies program, a freshman faculty adviser in Branford College, and the recipient of the Sarai Ribicoff Award for the Encouragement of Teaching at Yale College. She has served on numerous Yale committees, including the European Studies Council, the Steering Committee of Yale College, the Undergraduate Admissions Committee and the Fulbright Grants Committee. Her teaching and research interests include 19th- and 20th-century Russian and European literature, Existentialism, Modernism, and Religious Thought, and she is currently working on a study of T. S. Eliot and Russian culture. Her favorite undergraduate courses over the years have been "Directed Studies/Literature" and “Russian Literature in the Context of Western Philosophy". She is proud to announce that her book, Bergson and Russian Modernism, currently holds the Amazon Bestseller Rank of #3,857,234.
Dean Fink is joined in Branford by her husband, David Kawall, an Assistant Professor of Physics at UMass-Amherst, as well as Rachel (10 years old), Tessa (6 years old), and Sophie (4 years old). She enjoys Branford IM’s, playing the piano, and pushing the kids on the courtyard swing. Most importantly, however, Dean Fink is there to help Branford students with all aspects of their undergraduate experience, and she encourages students to drop by her office to chat about anything on their mind.
