In the winter of 2000, Judith Lewin was scheduled for a job interview on campus. But it almost didn't happen when northbound Amtrak trains struggled to make it through two feet of February snow.

“I remember seeing just people's top halves floating along the paths cut across campus... like the parting of a (white) Red Sea,” said Lewin, now an associate professor of English and chair of the department.

“I wasn't sure I'd ever be back again so during a break from interviews, I insisted on a visit to Special Collections to see the Audubon folios, and they indulged me!"

Since Lewin grasped the reins of the Department of English in 2013, she was loath to let go.

“I took over as department chair from Kara Doyle for two years in 2013-15 and then took a full year's sabbatical in Tel Aviv, Israel,” she said. Earlier sabbaticals she spent in Santa Fe, New Mexico ("for no reason, just because it was the antithesis of the northeast and I had cousins there"), and at Brandeis University, as a scholar in residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute.

When the family returned from Israel, it was her husband Bernhard Kuhn’s (an associate professor of English) turn to chair the department. The two met as students during orientation at Brown University.

“We've led what some would call an enchanted and others a cursèd life: going through college and grad school together, getting jobs in the same department and going through tenure together,” she said.

“But having him as my boss was one bridge too far,” she deadpans. “Don't tell him I said that.”

In 2019, she upended expectations and returned to chairing; with the support of her colleagues, in 2025, she began her ninth year (or fourth cycle). "Usually, people want to get in and get out, calling it an impossibly thankless job. Well, although it is rather powerless, I've been at this long enough to know where the bodies are buried." (Smirk). "And I am especially gratified by the thanks I do get" nominating students for prizes and shepherding colleagues through promotions, all in view of raising the profile of the English studies at Union.

Lewin's favorite course is the fall and winter English Honors Thesis Workshop, a bonding experience “of walking through fire together.” She is still in touch with alumni from the classes she led. She also doesn’t shy away from being competitive. “We need to win Prize Day!” Her thesis groups included valedictorians Hope Relly-Cobb ‘18 and Gabriella Baratier’25. Creative writing students in each of the groups have gone on to publish revised versions of their thesis work: stories, poems and novels. Lewin’s joy is to invite them back to Union to give alumni authors readings to inspire current students.

Lewin teaches mainly nineteenth-century literature courses, cross-listed with Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies, or an Introduction to Fiction section called “Fictional Forms: Launching a Life-long Love of Literature.”

Her research focus and teaching specialty is Jewish women's writing, on which she published a pedagogical essay teaching other professors to teach it. Her FYI and SRS/SCH is on Jewish graphic novels, frequently leading to poster sessions, LCD slideshows, or to Schaffer library exhibits like "Of Maus and Men(sch)."

She lives in Glenville, N.Y. with her husband, a 90-pound Bernedoodle named Callie (for Italo Calvino), who thinks she's a lapdog, and a Siberian cat, Milou (from Tintin) and the cat's cat, Babou. This menagerie shares a current senior at Union.

FIRST APP YOU LOOK AT IN THE MORNING:

Unfortunately, the answer is my calendar and/or my email. BORING.

WHAT ARE YOU READING?

This is a trick question for an English professor. I am always reading: everywhere, everything, all at once. The longer I sit with this interview, the more my answer changes. Horror of horrors: I borrow e-books from the Schenectady Public Library. It's the easiest thing and no overdue fines. E-books are more accessible too: variable font size and I don't need to lift them or to hold the pages open.

I keep an active list of books on my Goodreads account, but my "read" and "to-read" lists are almost equally long. In 2025, I officially read 69 books for fun. My five-star books from December are: “A Guardian and a Thief,” “You Dreamed of Empires,” “Kantika,” “The Museum of Failures” and “Heart the Lover.”

WHAT ARE YOU WATCHING:

Detective-thrillers, cozy mysteries, sci-fi, historical fiction...my tastes are eclectic. I enjoy watching books I've read translated into film, like “Magpie Murders” or “Marlow Murder Club,” adaptations of Harlan Coben and Blake Crouch. I am looking forward to streaming the adaptation of “Hamnet.”

BEST PIECE OF ADVICE YOU RECEIVED:

I used to worry about teaching in an English department while being trained in comparative literature, not English. This recent quote from Rabih Alameddine, winner of the National Book Award, describes my current state of being and advice I’d both take and give: “I’m at an age where little embarrasses me. Certainly not books I haven’t read. Reading is a pleasure, not a competition.”

ONE SKILL YOU WISH YOU HAD:

I wish I could wait until other people finish their sentences. I was raised as a "cooperative talker," (a kind name for someone who interrupts) which positively translates as, “I'm really into what you're saying when I start talking along with you.” The corollaries are, "get your story over faster because I have one too" and "the loudest voice wins" (See Grace Paley's "The Loudest Voice").

THREE DINNER PARTY GUESTS (living or deceased):

I'd like to entertain my favorite authors, but my favorite authors – the Brontës, Jane Austen, George Eliot (Marian Evans) – were notoriously reclusive. Not a good time. Instead, I'd enjoy a dinner with bon-vivants: Oscar Wilde for laughs, 18th-century author Eliza Heywood for scandal, and maybe Gertrude Stein, who was difficult, but had fabulous friends.

LITTLE KNOWN FACT ABOUT YOU:

During my first year of graduate school (age 21), I returned to my hometown -- Burlington, Vt. -- to renew my passport. The same day I took the passport picture (which I had for the next ten years) I auditioned for "Unsolved Mysteries," a program that used "reenactors." I booked the episode: about the Lake Champlain Monster (Champ). Strong 1980s hair, clothes and eyebrow vibes.

FAVORITE UNION MEMORY/EXPERIENCE:

In a long-ago basement classroom one of my first terms at Union, teaching an English Norton survey course called "British Authors 1680-1820," I found the vocabulary of the 18th-century authors we were reading infecting my own linguistic choices. One fearless engineer in the back row repeatedly raised his hand to ask that I write the word I had just used on the board. At the end of the course, he handed me a list he called his “Glossary of an English professor” -- illegibly hand-written in mechanical pencil with all the definitions added. And no, it was not on the test!

ONE THING YOU CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT:

NYT Games. I check if my family has already reported their scores (we're very competitive), and I begin with Wordle, Connections, Strands, or the daily crossword puzzle. I eventually do Pips as well, but I never start with it because the timed games get me too amped up.

WHICH LIVING PERSON DO YOU MOST ADMIRE:

This is a good reminder to have hope in a moment when it's inordinately challenging. This need for hope sends me back to the Obamas of 2008, I now admire Michelle Obama of 2026. Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, donating $26 billion to charity, is right up there too.