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Soundings
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to www-shss@mit.edu
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Introducing
new faculty
Danny Fox
Meg Jacobs
Robert Kanigel
Hayden K. Kernal
Norvin Richards
Christine Walley
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Danny
Fox, who joins the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
as an assistant professor, is currently a junior fellow in the Harvard
Society of Fellows (1998-2001). Fox received his MA in linguistics
from Tel Aviv University in 1993 and his PhD in linguistics from MIT
in 1998. His main interest lies in the relationship between the structure
of linguistic expressions and their potential contribution to thought
and communication (the relationship between structure and meaning).
His forthcoming book, Economy and Semantic Interpretation (MIT
Press), argues that principles of optimization regulate the form that
linguistic structures take as they are interpreted. |
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Meg
Jacobs joins the History Faculty as an assistant professor
of American history. Her areas of focus include politics, public policy
and business history. She received her BA from Cornell University
in 1990 and her PhD in history from the University of Virginia in
1998. Her dissertation,"The Politics of Purchasing Power," explores
the intersection of state development, consumer culture and American
politics from the New Deal through the Nixon Administration. She has
published articles on economic policymaking in the New Deal and the
administration of price controls in World War II. In the past she
has received funding from the Smithsonian Institution and the Truman
Library and currently holds a position as the Newcomen Postdoctoral
Fellow in Business History at the Harvard Business School. Before
coming to MIT, she taught at Claremont McKenna College in California. |
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Robert
Kanigel joins
MIT as a tenured professor of science writing in the Program in
Writing and Humanistic Studies. He is the author of hundreds of
articles, essays and reviews in such publications as The Sciences,
Science 85, The New York Times Magazine and Johns Hopkins
Magazine. He has written four books for general audiences, including
The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan,
a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist in biography, and
The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of
Efficiency. Kanigel received a BS in mechanical engineering
from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1966. Before coming to
MIT, he taught in the Publications Design program at the University
of Baltimore. He is currently at work on a history of travel and
tourism in Nice, France.
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Hadyn
K. Kernal, a new assistant professor in the Program in
Writing and Humanistic Studies and Comparative Media Studies, specializes
in the psychological effects of new technologies. She obtained a BA
in film and women's studies from Hampshire College in 1989, an MA
in social psychology from San Francisco State University in 1996 and
a PhD in communication theory and research from Stanford University
in 1999. While at Stanford, her research was broadly focused on social
responses to communication technologies and specialized in the psychological
effects of technological convergence. Her dissertation,"The Effects
of Perceived Control and Design Characteristics on Evaluations of
a Home Control System: Attitudes Towards a Working Prototype Versus
a Paper Concept," examined not only the unique issues around the introduction
of computerized home control, but also the comparability of two common
methods of new product evaluation: concept and usability testing.
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Norvin
Richards is a new assistant professor in the Department
of Linguistics and Philosophy, specializing in syntactic theory and
issues concerning endangered languages. He received a BA in linguistics
from Cornell University in 1993 and a PhD in linguistics from MIT
in 1997. He has published on binding theory, wh-movement, and the
syntax of Tagalog. His recent syntactic work has been concerned with
the notion of derivation in syntax, focusing mainly on interactions
between syntactic dependencies. He is also involved in ongoing work
with the Lardil, an aboriginal community of northern Australia; he
assisted in creating the first published Lardil dictionary and now
hopes to help produce further Lardil language materials. Before coming
to MIT, he taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and
did post-doctoral research at Kanda University in Makuhari, Japan. |
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Christine
Walley, a new assistant professor in the Anthropology
Program, focuses on the environment, development, gender and documentary/ethnographic
film. She received her BA in anthropology from Pomona College in
1987 and her PhD in sociocultural anthropology from New York University
in 1999. Her PhD dissertation,"Making Waves: Struggles over the
Environment, Development and Participation in the Mafia Island Marine
Park, Tanzania," looks at environmental conflict and the
role of international organizations as a way of exploring the nature
of global and local processes. In addition to transforming her dissertation
into a book, she currently is working as an associate producer on
a documentary about community conflict over nuclear power. She previously
published on the controversial topic of female genital surgeries
in Africa and also has conducted research on changing class relations
associated with deindustrialization in the United States.
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Copyright © 2000 Massachusetts
Institute of Technology |
Fall 1999
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