About the President
Stephen B. Snyder is the interim president of Middlebury.
At Middlebury, Snyder is the vice president for academic affairs, the dean of the Language Schools, and the Kawashima Professor of Japanese Studies. Snyder joined the Japanese Studies Department in 2005, was named dean of the Language Schools in 2014, and was appointed vice president for academic affairs in 2017. Prior to this appointment as interim president, Snyder served an eight-month term as interim dean of the Middlebury Institute in Monterey, California. He interrupted an academic sabbatical to begin the current appointment, following the conclusion of Laurie L. Patton’s term as the institution’s 17th president at the end of 2024. Snyder will serve as the interim president until June 30, 2025, or the beginning of the 18th president’s term, whichever occurs first.
Snyder’s research is in modern and contemporary Japanese fiction, translation theory, and literary translation. He has authored, edited, or translated numerous important works, from books and volumes to articles and encyclopedia entries.
His translations have been published in the New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, and other scholarly and general-interest periodicals. He’s also widely recognized: he received the American Book Award in 2020 for his translation of The Memory Police and has been a finalist for the International Booker Prize and the National Book Award, among many other honors.
Snyder holds a PhD from Yale in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, an MA from Columbia in the Department of English and Comparative Literatures, and a BA from Michigan State in the Department of English.