Nine Receive Tenure in Arts and Sciences

By Lois Josimovich

Special to the Gazette

They are Andrew Biewener in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Steven C. Caton and Kay B. Warren in the Department of Anthropology, Bradley Epps in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Jay H. Jasanoff in the Department of Linguistics, Markus Meister in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Andrew G. Myers in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Eric Rentschler in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Jeroen Tromp in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

Tenured Faculty

Andrew Biewener, who holds a Ph.D. (1982) and a master's (1981) in biology from Harvard, has been appointed a professor of Biology in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, effective July 1.

"I'm very excited about it," said Biewener. "It gives me a chance to move in a lot of new directions."

Biewener, on the faculty of the University of Chicago since 1982, is a physiologist and anatomist who has formulated a number of fundamental principles of bone design among mammals. Since 1995, he has been a professor and chair of the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at Chicago, as well as a professor of the Committee on Evolutionary Biology at the university. He also has been a research associate at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology since 1982.

Biewener's work has received numerous grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and other sources. He has taught courses in Human Morphology and Histology, Vertebrate Structure and Function, Calcified Tissue Biology, Animal Locomotion, Animal Biomechanics, and Organismal Biology. He has published extensively and is working on a new book, Animal Locomotion (Oxford University Press).

Andrew H. Knoll, chair of Harvard's Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, said, "We're looking forward to his stewardship of the Concord Field Station."

Knoll said the University-owned station was known as an international center for integrated research on animal physiology, but has been "in need of direction" since the untimely death several years ago of Professor Richard Taylor, who headed the facility. "Andy Biewener is superbly qualified to restore it to a position of preeminence," he said.

Biewener said his move to Harvard represents "a chance to rejuvenate the vertebrate biology program" at the University.

Steven C. Caton and Kay B. Warren will join the Department of Anthropology as tenured professors effective July 1.

"I'm extremely delighted to have both of them join the faculty," said Peter Ellison, Department chair. "Both of them are superb scholars with worldwide reputations in different but complementary areas of social anthropology."

Caton comes to Harvard from the graduate faculty of the New School for Social Research, where he is an associate professor and chair of Anthropology. He holds a joint Ph.D. in anthropology and linguistics from the University of Chicago and a master's degree in anthropology from Northwestern University.

Caton previously held posts at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Washington University, Hamilton College, Carleton College and Vassar College. An expert on the anthropology of the Middle East and in linguistic anthropology, he has worked on theories of self, language, and poetry and is known for his ethnographic work, "Peaks of Yemen I Summon": Poetry as Cultural Practice in a North Yemeni Tribe, among other writings.

His new Harvard post as professor of modern Arab society will allow him for the first time in his career to concentrate fully on modern Arab studies.

He currently is working on a book combining data about the making of the film Lawrence of Arabia with extended analysis of its meaning in terms of colonialism and postcolonialism, "Orientalism," and gender. Other work in progress includes studying the anthropology of events, and research on the Yemeni immigrants of Brooklyn, N.Y.

According to Ellison, Caton's work on questions of ethnicity and identity among Arab communities around the globe is also an important contribution to contemporary anthropology.

Warren has chaired the Anthropology Department at Princeton University since 1994 and has taught there since 1982. An expert in the study of contemporary Mayan peoples of Guatemala, "she has been a major contributor to our understanding of ethnicity, gender, and politics in the formation of group and individual identity," said Ellison. Warren also founded the Program in Women's Studies at Princeton, and has pursued parallel studies into problems of identity politics and violence.

Warren said she was "delighted and excited" about her new appointment, which will give her a chance to work with both old friends and new colleagues. "I have had a wonderful 16 years at Princeton," she said, praising the department there. But, she added, "There's a moment when you're just in the mood to do new things."

Warren has written and edited copious works, including The Symbolism of Subordination: Indian Identity in a Guatemalan Town; Women of the Andes: Patriarchy and Social Change in Two Peruvian Towns, the latter co-authored with Susan C. Bourque; and The Violence Within: Cultural and Political Opposition in Divided Nations, for which she was the editor and provided two essays. Her most recent book, Indigenous Movements and Their Critics: Pan-Maya Activists in Guatemala, has just gone to press.

Warren has shared her expertise not only with other universities, but with presidential committees on women's status and on diversity. She also worked with the producers of the Americas public television series at WGBH Boston on representation of cultural issues from 1986 to 1992. She is the faculty chair for the MacArthur Foundation's Research and Writing Grants for the Program on Global Security and Sustainability. The recipient of numerous grants and awards, she holds a master's degree and a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Princeton.

Bradley Epps has been promoted to full professorship at the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.

"I'm very happy to be here. I love my colleagues," said Epps, who made the difficult choice to stay rather than accept a chair in Spanish in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Epps has served as the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities at Harvard since 1996, and has authored many works on contemporary Hispanic literature and cultures as well as literary theory, including the book, Significant Violence: Oppression and Resistance in the Narratives of Juan Goytisolo, 1970-1990.

Epps holds a Ph.D. in Hispanic studies from Brown University and a master's degree in Hispanic studies from the University of Virginia. He has received numerous honors and grants, including a Fulbright Research Grant in Madrid, Spain, in 1985-86, and has taught a variety of courses in Spanish literature and culture at Harvard, Emory University, Brown University, St. Louis University in Madrid, the University of Virginia, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison as well as a graduate consortium in Women's Studies at Radcliffe on Gender, Sexuality and Culture in the United States and Latin America.

"He is an unusually wide-ranging scholar," said Department Chair Susan Suleiman, praising Epps's abilities in not only contemporary Spanish and Latin American literature and culture, but also French and Catalan. "My colleagues and I consider him a very valuable member of our Department," she said, adding that he will resume his former position as director of undergraduate studies for the Department this fall in addition to his other duties.

Epps said he will be teaching courses in women's studies and Spanish literature aside from his administrative and curriculum work. His research will focus on questions of modernity in Spanish literature, gay and lesbian issues in Spain and Latin America, and Latino culture in the United States.

Jay H. Jasanoff, a leading Indo-Europeanist, has been appointed a professor of linguistics as of July 1.

Jasanoff, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Linguistics at Cornell University, received his B.A. (1963) and Ph.D. in linguistics (1968) from Harvard. He has received numerous grants and awards, including a Fulbright Fellowship to the University of Bonn. He taught linguistics and Germanic philology as a teaching fellow, assistant professor, and associate professor at Harvard in the 1960s and '70s, as well as teaching briefly at the University of California at Berkeley. He has been at Cornell since 1978 and also has had visiting appointments at Oxford, Yale, and Harvard universities.

"I'm delighted to be coming back," said Jasanoff, noting that one of his children is about to receive a Ph.D. here. He said he looked forward to working with the exceptionally bright students at Harvard and "taking advantage of Harvard's unparalleled library facilities" as he continues his research.

Jasanoff is best known for his groundbreaking work on the reconstruction of the Indo-European verb system. Among his published works is the book Stative and Middle in Indo-European.

"We are delighted at the prospect of having Professor Jasanoff join our faculty," said Michael Flier, chair of the Department of Linguistics. Flier praised Jasanoff as a "superb teacher," as well as for his achievements as a leading specialist in Indo-European linguistics.

Markus Meister, the Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor of Biology at Harvard since 1995, has been appointed to a full tenured professorship in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology.

"The appointment here was a big boost," said Meister. "My wife and I ended up choosing between a number of attractive options."

"The whole department is delighted not only that he was promoted, but also that we were successful in keeping him at Harvard," said Department Chair Richard M. Losick. "He is a brilliant neurobiologist and has already begun to play a leadership role in the growth of neurosciences on this campus."

Meister holds a Ph.D. in physics from the California Institute of Technology and is the recipient of numerous awards and honors. His work has been widely published and presented throughout the United States and abroad. Meister has taught neuroscience here since 1991, and expects to continue his studies on the neurobiology of vision.

Andrew G. Myers has been tenured in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, effective July 1.

Myers received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard in 1985 and his bachelor's degree from M.I.T., but has been teaching at the California Institute of Technology since 1986 - most recently as a full professor - since completing his postdoctoral research at Harvard. He is currently a chemistry professor at Cal-Tech.

Myers is a synthetic chemist involved in the development of total synthesis strategies for complex organic structures, among other work. He has a variety of published research credits and has received many awards and honors for his work.

"Obviously we're delighted" with hiring Myers, said David E. Evans, the Department chair. "These appointments take a lot of effort and he's going to be a terrific addition to the organic chemistry faculty."

One of the world's leading authorities on German film, Eric Rentschler will join the faculty of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures as a professor of German, effective July 1.

"He will teach very exciting courses on German film and on 20th-century German studies," said Eckehard Simon, Department chair. "He is a gifted and generous teacher and a dynamic intellectual who is eager to debate with students and faculty. I think he will become an intellectual center for our department."

Rentschler said he thought there was already a strong intellectual center in the Department, adding that he hopes to help expand the program's outreach as well as making film studies a stronger academic presence in the Harvard community. He said he looks forward to his move from California to the East Coast, and to his new appointment.

"It's that heady prospect of moving to the academic and intellectual community of one's dreams," said Rentschler.

He was a professor in the Department of German at the University of California in Irvine from 1986 to 1991. Since 1991, he has been a professor in the university's Program in Film Studies. He previously taught at Ohio State University, and holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington. He held a guest professorship at Harvard in 1996 and similar posts at several other institutions.

One of Rentschler's most well-known works is his 1996 book, The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife.

Throughout his career, he has pursued literary history, critical thought, cultural studies, and film analysis, focusing particularly on the modern German experience. "I'm using film as a vehicle to talk about things like collective memory, national identity, and the degree to which national identity is a function of the audiovisual media in general," he said.

Jeroen Tromp has been tenured in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

"I think that he is a superb appointment for the Department," said Michael B. McElroy, chair of the Department. "He is a world leader in theoretical seismology and has achieved remarkably considering his young age. The Department is delighted that he accepted a permanent position."

Tromp, the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Natural Sciences in the Department since 1996, said he was also thrilled with his promotion. "I am very pleased," he said.

Tromp said he would continue his work on computer modeling of seismic wave propagation, analyzing earthquakes, and imaging the Earth. "Of late, I've become very interested in some of the new numerical modeling techniques," he said.

Tromp holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. degree from Princeton University, and has received numerous honors and awards. He has taught at Harvard since 1992 and has been published extensively. His 1,000-page monograph with F.A. Dahlen, Theoretical Global Seismology, will be published by Princeton University Press in October.