Lyon will also be appointed as the College’s inaugural Charles A. Smithgall Jr. Institute Chair.

David Shook, associate professor of Spanish, has agreed to continue to serve as interim chair until July 31. Effective immediately, Shook will work closely with Lyon to ensure a smooth transition of School leadership.

“Dr. Lyon’s accomplished record as an educator, researcher, scholar, and administrator will serve the School of Modern Languages well,” said Kaye Husbands Fealing, dean and Ivan Allen Jr. Chair of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. “I know he will provide exceptional vision and leadership to the School as it continues to strengthen its reputation as a leader in modern language instruction, cross-cultural humanities education, and interdisciplinary research.”

Lyon, a professor and chair of the German Department at the University of Pittsburgh, and has also taught at Duke University, Colby College, and Carleton College.

His research and teaching interests include German literature, philosophy, and culture of the 18th and 19th centuries. He is the author of two monographs: Crafting Flesh, Crafting the Self: Violence and Identity in Early 19th Century German Literature (2006), and Out of Place: German Realism, Displacement, and Modernity (2013); and co-editor of two volumes: Theodor Fontane in the Twenty-First Century (2019) and Gender, Collaboration, and Authorship in German Culture: Literary Joint Ventures, 1750-1850 (2019).

Lyon's articles have appeared in top journals in his field, including Colloquia Germanica, Eighteenth-Century Studies, German Life and Letters, Goethe Yearbook, and Literature and Medicine.

He is the editor of the New Studies in the Age of Goethe book series with Bucknell University Press and co-founder and past chair of the Humanities Council at the University of Pittsburgh.

His current project is a monograph on transnationalism in 19th-century European adultery novels.