Faculty receive DSPs, named professorships

Six University faculty members, Tom Gunning, John Mark Hansen, Salikoko Mufwene, Julian Solway, Hugo Sonnenschein, and new faculty member Hisashi Yamamoto, have recently received distinguished service professorships.

Thirteen University professors have received named professorships, including two new faculty members, James Madara, who also has been appointed Dean of the Biological Sciences Division, and Brian Popko.

Current faculty members who have received named professorships are: Raymond Ball, J. Terry Ernest, Norma Field, David Jablonski, Richard Kraig, Steven Levitt, Kevin Murphy, Mark Ratain, Jacob Rotmensch, Richard Shweder and Edward Snyder.

Thomas Gunning

Thomas Gunning, Professor in Art History, the Committee on Cinema & Media Studies and the College, has been named the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor.

An expert on early film, Gunning has written on such foundational cinema figures as D.W. Griffith. His book D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph (1991) won the 1992 Theater Library Association Award. His latest book, The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity (2000), was named an outstanding academic book in 2001 by Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.

Gunning earned his B.A. in the history and literature of religion in 1970 from Washington Square College of New York University.

He earned his M.A. in 1974 and his Ph.D. in 1986, both in cinema studies from NYU. He taught at SUNY-Purchase from 1978 to 1993 and at Northwestern University from 1993 to 1996. Gunning then joined Chicago’s faculty as a Professor in Art History. He has also taught at Harvard University, Stockholm University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Columbia University and NYU.

A 1998 Guggenheim Fellow, Gunning is a member of the Society for Cinema Studies, the Modern Language Association and Domitor, the International Association for the Study of Early Film, in which he served as a member of the founding committee, the executive board, and as president.

John Mark Hansen

Hansen, who was a professor of government at Harvard University during the 2001-2002 academic year, joined the Chicago faculty in 1986 and was named the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor in Political Science in 1999.

Hansen’s work focuses on interest groups, citizen activism and public opinion. He is the author of Mobilization, Participation and Democracy in America (1993) with Steven Rosenstone, and Gaining Access: Congress and the Farm Lobby, 1919-1981 (1991).

Hansen received a B.A. in 1981 from the University of Kansas, and an M.Phil. in 1983 and a Ph.D. in 1987 from Yale University.

Salikoko Mufwene

Salikoko Mufwene has been named a Distinguished Service Professor in Linguistics. Mufwene specializes in the study of how languages evolve, examining them from the perspective of population genetics and ecology.

He is an expert in the development of creole languages and has also published on semantics and syntax, language contact and sociolinguistics. His most recent major works are The Ecology of Language Evolution and a translation (with content-editing) of Robert Chaudenson’s Creolization of Language and Culture (both 2001).

Mufwene earned his Licence en Philosophie et Lettres, the equivalent of a B.A., in English philology at the National University of Zaire in 1973, and completed his Ph.D. in Linguistics at Chicago in 1979. He went on to teach at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica and then at the University of Georgia. In 1991, he joined the Chicago faculty.

In addition to winning a Fulbright scholarship, Mufwene also received a Giles Whiting Fellowship for dissertation work at the University as well as NEH and NSF grants to study Gullah.

A member of several committees in learned societies of linguistics, Mufwene is currently the Vice President of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics and on the Advisory Boards of the Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages and Language Variation and Change, among others. He is the series editor of Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact.

Julian Solway

He and his colleagues address the molecular and cellular mechanisms of asthma, focusing on the abnormal structure and function of the smooth muscle bundles that encircle the airways. He also studies the genetic abnormalities that may predispose to asthma.

He has won numerous honors, including the 2001 Award for Outstanding Work in Science as Related to Medicine from the American College of Physicians and the American Society of Internal Medicine. He also leads a Specialized Center of Research in Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms of Asthma research program supported by the NIH.

Solway is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned his M.D. cum laude from Harvard Medical School.

He did his residency and clinical and research fellowships at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and taught at Harvard Medical School from 1983 to 1985.

He came to the University in 1985 and has been a Professor since 1995 and Chair of the Committee on Molecular Medicine since 2001.

He also directs the Pulmonary Function Laboratory at the University’s Medical Center and leads the University’s Asthma Center, which provides educational and community outreach programs.

Hugo Sonnenschein

Hugo Sonnenschein, President Emeritus and the Charles L. Hutchinson Distinguished Service Professor in Economics and the College, has been named the Adam Smith Distinguished Service Professor in Economics and the College.

One of the world’s leading microeconomic theorists, Sonnenschein has focused his work on theories of consumer and firm behavior, general economic equilibrium, game theory and social choice.

In addition to serving on the editorial boards of a variety of economic journals, he was editor of Econometrica from 1977 to 1984 and president of the Econometric Society from 1988 to 1989.

Prior to becoming the University’s 11th President, Sonnenschein was provost from 1991 to 1993 at Princeton University, where he also served as professor of economics from 1976 to 1988. He then became dean of the school of arts and sciences at the University of Pennsylvania from 1988 to 1991, and has been a visiting professor of economics at numerous universities in the United States and abroad. Sonnenschein earned honorary degrees from several institutions, including Tel-Aviv University, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Purdue University and the University of Chicago.

He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He is also a trustee of the University of Rochester and the Institute for the International Education of Students, and Honorary Trustee of the University of Chicago.

Sonnenschein received a B.A. in mathematics from the University of Rochester in 1961 and a Ph.D. in economics from Purdue University in 1964.

Raymond Ball

Ball’s research focuses on corporate disclosure, earnings and stock prices, international accounting, market efficiency and investment strategies, the institutions of a market economy and the Australian economy and share market.

Prior to joining the GSB, Ball held faculty positions at the London Business School, the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Rochester, the Australian Graduate School of Management and the University of Queensland.

Ball received the American Accounting Association’s inaugural award for Seminal Contributions to the Accounting Literature for “An Empirical Evaluation of Accounting Income Numbers” (co-authored with Philip Brown in 1968).

He received a B.Com in accounting with first-class honors from the University of New South Wales in 1965, an M.B.A. in 1968 and a Ph.D. in economics in 1972, both from the GSB.

An authority on the treatment of diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma and macular degeneration, J. Terry Ernest, Chairman of Ophthalmology & Visual Science, has been named the first Cynthia Chow Professor in the Department.

Ernest was a University faculty member from 1966 through 1977, returned in 1981 and became Chairman of Ophthalmology in 1985.

He has received many awards for research on eye disease and has lectured across the country on the eye and its diseases. In 1997, Ernest led a team that performed the first fetal tissue transplant as an experimental treatment for age-related macular degeneration.

Eye surgeons and journalists around the world followed this study carefully, and in the fall of that same year, Time magazine designated Ernest a “Hero of Medicine” for his pioneering efforts to find a better therapy for this common eye disease.

Ernest earned a B.A. at Northwestern University and then earned his M.D. and his Ph.D. in visual science from Chicago. He did his internship at Indiana University Medical Center and completed his residency as a U.S. Public Health Service Trainee at the University.

Norma Field

Norma Field, the William J. and Alicia Townsend Friedman Professor in East Asian Languages & Civilizations, has been named the Robert S. Ingersoll Professor in Japanese Studies.

Field studies modern and contemporary Japanese literature and culture, and her work has ranged from the analysis of Japanese novels to the moral and legal questions of crimes against women in World War II, and from the use of Japanese nationalist symbols to the integration of Koreans into Japanese society. Her current research interests include the proletarian literature of the 1920s and 30s and the role of the Communist Party, especially with respect to women and the arts. My Grandmother’s Land, a collection of her essays including several originally written in Japanese, was recently published to wide acclaim in Japan.

Field grew up in Tokyo and later attended Pitzer College in the United States, where she earned a B.A. in European studies. She then changed her focus to East Asia, and earned an M.A. from Indiana University and a Ph.D. from Princeton University in East Asian studies.

She came to the University as an Assistant Professor in 1983 and was appointed Professor in 1993.

She is the author of The Splendor of Longing in the Tale of Genji (1987), In the Realm of a Dying Emperor (1991) and From My Grandmother’s Bedside: Sketches of Postwar Tokyo (1997).

David Jablonski

Jablonski came to Chicago in 1985 from the University of Arizona, where he had been a member of the department of ecology and evolutionary biology since 1982. He is also an honorary research fellow of the Natural History Museum in London and a research associate of the Field Museum of Natural History.

He was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2000 and a Guggenheim Fellow in 1999. In 1988, he received the Paleontological Society’s Schuchert Award for outstanding paleontologist under the age of 40.

Jablonski is the co-editor of three books, Evolutionary Paleobiology (1996), Patterns and Processes in the History of Life (1986) and The Encyclopedia of Paleontology (1979). He has published more than 100 scientific papers and book chapters.

He received his B.S. in geology in 1974 from Columbia University, and he earned his M.S. degree in 1976 and his Ph.D. in 1979 from Yale University. He is currently the Chair of the Committee on Evolutionary Biology.

Richard Kraig

Richard Kraig, an authority on the role of glial cells within the brain, on how the brain protects itself from injury and on the treatment of migraine headaches, has been named the William D. Mabie Professor in the Neurosciences. Kraig holds academic appointments in Neurology; Neurobiology, Pharmacology & Physiology; and the Committee on Neurobiology.

He has received numerous awards for his basic neuroscience research efforts that include a Teacher Investigator Development Award and Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, a Zenith Award from the Alzheimer’s Association and an Established Investigator Award and Bugher Award from the American Heart Association. Kraig has also received teaching awards at the University for his efforts in directing and teaching medical neurobiology.

Kraig has served as Associate Dean for Basic Research, Interim Director of the Brain Research Institute, Associate Chair of Neurology, Director of the Neurology Residency Program and Chair of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.

He earned his B.A. in chemistry from Cornell College, a Ph.D. in physiology and biophysics from the University of Iowa and his M.D. from New York University. He was an intern at the University of Chicago and did his residency in neurology at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center where he took his first faculty position before joining Chicago’s faculty in 1988.

Steven Levitt

A faculty member since 1997, Levitt studies the economic aspects of crime and corruption, the criminal justice system, abortion legalization and school choice.

Levitt, editor of the Journal of Political Economy, is the author of several recent articles about crime, including “Legalized Abortion as an Explanation for the Decline in Crime” and “An Economic Analysis of a Drug-Selling Gang’s Finances” in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and “Alternative Strategies for Identifying the Link Between Unemployment and Crime” in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology.

Levitt, who was named this past year to the economics section of the National Academy of Sciences, received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the National Science Foundation in 2000 and the University’s Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1998.

He is also a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and at the American Bar Foundation.

Levitt received a B.A. in economics from Harvard University in 1989 and a Ph.D. in economics in 1994 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Kevin Murphy

Kevin Murphy has been named the George J. Stigler Professor of Economics in the Graduate School of Business. A faculty member since 1984, Murphy previously served as the George Pratt Shultz Professor of Economics and Industrial Relations in the GSB.

Murphy’s research focuses on the empirical analysis of inequality, unemployment and relative wages, and the economics of growth and development.

He is co-author of Social Economics: Market Behavior in a Social Environment and also has written numerous articles for academic journals including the Journal of Law and Economics, the Journal of Political Economy and the Journal of Labor Economics.

Every other year, the American Economic Association awards the John Bates Clark Medal to the most outstanding American economist under the age of 40. In 1997, Murphy received one of these Clark Medals for his research on labor issues.

Murphy is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a faculty research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

He received a B.A. in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1981 and a Ph.D. from Chicago in 1986.

Mark Ratain

A researcher who studies new cancer therapies, Ratain directs the University’s research efforts in Phase 1 cancer clinical trials, aimed at determining the optimal dose of new anticancer drugs. He has also pioneered the field of cancer pharmacogenetics, the study of the genetic factors that influence drug metabolism, toxicity and response to chemotherapy.

Ratain is Chairman of the Committee on Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacogenomics and Associate Director for Clinical Sciences at the University’s Cancer Research Center. He also serves as Chairman of the Pharmacogenetics of Anticancer Agents Research Group, a multidisciplinary effort working to individualize treatments for people with cancer. The group comprises investigators from the University, St. Jude Children’s Research Center, Tulane University and the University of Pittsburgh, and is part of the NIH Pharmacogenetics Research Network.

Ratain is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University, and he received his M.D. from Yale University. After internship and residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, he came to Chicago for a fellowship in hematology and oncology. He joined the Chicago faculty in 1986.

Jacob Rotmensch

Gynecologic oncologist Jacob Rotmensch has been appointed the Mary Campau Ryerson Professor in Obstetrics & Gynecology and Radiation & Cellular Oncology.

A nationally known authority on the treatment of gynecologic cancers, Rotmensch leads a team at the University and at Argonne National Laboratory that has been investigating the use of a special class of radioactive particles to treat ovarian cancer since 1987.

Rotmensch and his colleagues are developing alpha-emitting radionuclides, a class of isotopes that is particularly well suited to treating the small tumors left behind after surgery for ovarian cancer.

His team is the only program in the world with the facilities and permission from the Department of Energy to make Bismuth-212. They are preparing to begin clinical trials that would involve injecting this isotope into the peritoneal space of patients with ovarian cancer.

Rotmensch earned his B.S. in chemistry from the University of Illinois, an M.S. in biopharmaceutics and pharmacokinetics from the University of Cincinnati, and his M.D. from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tenn. He did his residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where he taught from 1981 to 1984. He joined the Chicago faculty in 1985.

Richard Shweder

A cultural anthropologist who has been on the University’s faculty since 1973, Shweder has focused his research in the areas of ethnopsychology, cultural psychology, the anthropology of thought and cross-cultural human development and culture theory.

Shweder, who also has an appointment in the Committee on South Asian Studies, has written or edited nine books, including Thinking Through Cultures: Expeditions in Culture Psychology (1991) and Engaging Cultural Differences (2002).

Shweder was a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study in Berlin and the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He was named a 2002 Carnegie Scholar for his current research project, which will lead to his proposed book, When Cultures Collide: The Multicultural Challenge in Liberal Democracies.

During the next year, Shweder will begin this project by conducting ethnographic research to examine how Islamic immigrants adapt their religion to the secular society of the United States.

Shweder received a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh in 1966 and his Ph.D in social anthropology from Harvard University in 1972.

Edward Snyder

Edward Snyder, Dean of the Graduate School of Business, has been named the George Pratt Shultz Professor of Economics in the GSB. Snyder has served as Dean since July 2001.

Snyder’s research focuses on industrial organization, antitrust economics, law and economics, and financial institutions.

Prior to joining the GSB, Snyder was the Charles C. Abbott professor in business administration and dean at the University of Virginia’s Darden School from 1998 to 2001.

Snyder served as a faculty member of the University of Michigan Business School from 1982 to 1998, during which time he became the Director of the Davidson Institute, which focuses on business and public policy issues in transition economies and emerging markets.

He also served as senior associate dean of the University of Michigan Business School and had direct responsibility for faculty matters and professional degree programs.

He co-authored the book Crisis Resolution in the Thrift Industry, and has written numerous journal articles and book chapters.

Snyder received a B.A. in economics and government from Colby College in 1975, an M.A. in Public Policy in 1978, and a Ph.D. in Economics in 1984, both from Chicago.