Published by the MIT News Office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
Published by the MIT News Office at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
Five Named to New Posts in HASS Dean Philip S. Khoury of the School of Humanities and Social Science has announced several appointments, including three professorships, the first Class of 1960 Fellow and a new head of The Writing Program. Individually, these are: -John W. Dower, who joins the MIT community as professor of history and holder of the Henry R. Luce Professorship in International Cooperation and Global Stability. -Janet Currie, assistant professor in the Department of Economics, who has been selected as the second holder of the Pentti J.K. Kouri Career Development Chair for two years beginning July 1, 1991. She joins the economics department this year as a labor economist and applied econometrician. -Kenneth R. Manning, professor of the history of science in The Writing Program and the Program in Science, Technology and Society, who becomes the new Thomas Meloy Professor of Rhetoric. -Arthur Steinberg, associate professor of archeology in the Anthropology/Archeology Program and director of the Integrated Studies Program, who has been appointed the first Class of 1960 Fellow. -Alan Lightman, professor of science and writing and a senior lecturer in physics, who succeeds Professor Manning as head of The Writing Program. Professor Dower, the new Luce Professor, was elected this year as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was the Joseph Naiman Professor of History and Japanese Studies at the University of California, San Diego, from 1986 to 1991. From 1971 to 1986, he was a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The Luce Professorships were established to encourage academic innovation through an integrative approach to the humanities, the social sciences, and related disciplines. Dr. Dower received his BA in American Studies from Amherst College in 1959 and his PhD in history and Far East languages from Harvard University in 1972. He is the author of numerous books and articles on modern Japanese history and US-Japan relations. His 1986 book, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, was a comparative study of the racial and psychological aspects of the war from both Anglo-American and Japanese perspectives. It received the National Book Critics Circle Prize for non-fiction and the Ohira Memorial Prize for distinguished scholarship on Asia and the Pacific. Professor Dower is now writing a book titled Reinventing Japan, dealing with the period immediately following World War II. Dean Khoury, commenting on the appointment, said, "In John Dower, the school will have one of the most remarkably gifted scholars of modern Japan and a true public intellectual who has the courage and commitment to confront the complex issues that involve Japan and the United States." Professor Currie received a BA and MA in economics from the University of Toronto, and PhD from Princeton. She has been an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Currie will be a member of the Department of Economics' industrial relations section, a group which draws labor specialists from throughout the Institute to periodic seminars and research projects in the Sloan School of Management. Her initial work focused on collective bargaining, dispute resolution and wage determination in the unionized sector of the economy. More recently, she has turned to problems of social welfare with her most recent paper, "Does Participation in Transfer Programs During Pregnancy Increase Birth Rates?" "MIT is very fortunate to have found Janet Currie, who has emerged in the past three years as one of the most promising labor economists in the country," Dean Khoury said. Professor Manning, the new Meloy Professor, is credited by Dean Khoury with developing The Writing Program "into its present position of service to MIT. Under Ken Manning's leadership, the program has achieved national recognition based on the scholarship and creative teaching of its faculty." He added, "Ken's contributions to The Writing Program, his national reputation as a historian of science, and the focus of the Meloy Chair on Rhetoric made him an obvious candidate for the chair." The Meloy Professorship was established in 1978 by Thomas Meloy, a member of the Class of 1917 and founder of Meloy Industries, "to encourage students to gain a greater mastery of words in every field of their education, whether the humanities, the arts, the social sciences, or engineering." Professor Manning received his BA (1970), MA (1971) and PhD (1974) from Harvard in the history of science. He joined the MIT faculty in 1974. Professor Manning's 1983 book, Black Apollo of Science, a biography of the scientist Ernest Everett Just, received the Pfizer Award of the History of Science Society and the Lucy Hampton Bostick Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography. Last spring, Dr. Manning gave the prestigious Sarton memorial Lecture at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Professor Manning now is studying the role of blacks in American medicine. Professor Steinberg's selection as Class of 1960 Fellow reflects "his distinguished leadership in teaching, commitment to educational innovation, and service to the MIT community," according to Dean Khoury. Professor Steinberg's training-he received his AB at Harvard in 1958 and PhD in classical archeology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1966- was interdisciplinary, combining history, archeology and art history. He joined the MIT faculty in 1969 and held the W.R. Kenan Jr. Career Development Professorship in 1972-74. His earlier research involved excavations on Cyprus and mainland Turkey on ancient metallurgy. Recently he has studied the development of oil painting, especially in Venice. Through his work in the Integrated Studies Program, Professor Steinberg has become involved in spearheading educational projects such as developing an ISP-like curricula for the Cambridge and Quincy school systems. This past summer he ran a week-long workshop for teachers and administrators of a number of school systems as far away as Chicago and San Francisco. Dean Khoury commented, "Professor Steinberg is a popular, energetic and innovative teacher committed to improving undergraduate education at MIT, especially with respect to bridging the gulf between the humanities and social sciences and science and technology. The range of his intellectual pursuits is simply tremendous." In his new position, Professor Lightman heads a program founded in 1975 to provide MIT students with an opportunity to do creative writing. Since then, The Writing Program's scope has greatly expanded. It now offers more than 25 subjects in creative, expository and scientific writing, and covers topics ranging from poetry to the cultural context of science and technology. Dr. Lightman plans to emphasize the program's concern with the human dimensions of science. Before coming to MIT in 1989, Professor Lightman taught astronomy and physics at Harvard. He received his AB from Princeton University in 1970 and PhD in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1974. His scientific research is in the area of theoretical astrophysics, and he has authored two widely used textbooks. His essays on the human side of science, collected into two books, have appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper's and Science `86. His recent study of the social and psychological factors in the scientific process, Origins, coauthored with Roberta Brawer, won the Association of American Publishers award for the most outstanding book in physical science in 1990. Professor Lightman has served on numerous national committees in science and science education and is a Fellow both of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.