Many factors combined to make Menand a no-brainer for the department.

Damrosch said his focus in modernism and American literature was something that made him a very attractive candidate, calling him “a major figure who’s really centered there.”

“This is something we’ve been trying to do for quite a while, and I think we really found the right person,” he said.

Buell called Menand’s hiring “one sign of the resolution to commit more of our resources to modern literature, culture and studies,” saying those areas are “the center of gravity of Prof. Menand’s work.”

And New especially noted Menand’s intellectual ties to the University.

“We in the Harvard English department cherish a special affection for an Americanist who has made Harvard and Harvardians so much his subject,” she said, mentioning his work on Oliver Wendell Holmes, Class of 1861, William James, Class of 1864, T.S. Eliot ’12 and former University President James B. Conant ’14 among others.

Buell also stressed Menand’s ability in the classroom.

He “has been proven to reach out very effectively to all student constituencies,” said Buell. “He’s keen to teach and he’s had great success teaching, from freshmen to a graduate school level,” he said.

Dolan echoed this praise, speaking of the high demand which students always had for Menand’s time at CUNY.

“His courses would inevitably fill up within several hours,” he said.

Under the weight of such rave reviews, Buell said, top FAS administrators hurried Menand through the approval process, with the final go-ahead coming in mid-May of this year.

“We’re delighted that it happened really much more quickly—the process from start to finish—than is average for Harvard’s senior faculty recruitment,” he said. “It’s not unknown for it to take several years from the first nibble stage to when the person actually arrives.”

Buell said Menand’s hiring had been unrelated to the substantial numbers of English faculty who will be on leave next year, calling that timing “a happy coincidence to say the least.”

Joining the Club

By all accounts, it seems Menand will be in his element here in Cambridge, which the Metaphysical Club he scrutinized called home.