| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Harold Bloom | | | Institution: | Yale University & New York University | | | Year Elected: | 1995 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 404. History of the Arts, Literature, Religion and Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1930 | | | Death Date: | October 14, 2019 | | | | | | |
Born in New York City in 1930, Harold Bloom, studied at Cornell University under Meyer Abrams before undertaking graduate work at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. from Yale in 1957 and has been a member of the faculty there since that time, becoming Sterling Professor of the Humanities in 1977. Also Berg Professor of English at New York University, Dr. Bloom is known for his notably original books on Shelley, Blake, Stevens, and Yeats as well as for his theory of poetic influence, which he voiced in a series of books including The Anxiety of Influence, A Map of Misreading, and Ruin the Sacred Truths. Advocating an aesthetic approach to literature that stands in opposition to more ideologically-driven studies, he has characterized literature as largely a creative process of borrowing and misreading. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1985. In 1994 Dr. Bloom published The Western Canon, a survey of the major literary works of post-Roman Europe. In 2011, at the age of 80, he wrote The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life, as a sort of "summing-up" of his decades of celebrated work. In 2015 he wrote The Daemon Knows. With his wit, brio and critical style, he is credited with revitalizing the Romantic poets and redefining modern ones. Harold Bloom died October 14, 2019 in New Haven, Connecticut at the age of 89. | |
| 2 | Name: | Professor Peter R. L. Brown | | | Institution: | Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 1995 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 404a | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1935 | | | | | | |
Peter Robert Lamont Brown has transformed our understanding of Mediterranean and Near Eastern culture between Constantine and Muhammad. With imagination and wide-ranging erudition, he has represented as a time of spiritual renewal and cultural interaction what was once considered an age of decline. A speaker of an estimated 26 languages, Dr. Brown has published a wide variety of books and articles, including the early biography Augustine of Hippo (1967), Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (1992), and Through the Eye of a Needle (2012). Born in Dublin in 1935, Dr. Brown is a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and has taught at Oxford, the University of London and the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently the Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History at Princeton University, a position he has held since 1986. | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Caroline Bynum | | | Institution: | Institute for Advanced Study, Columbia University | | | Year Elected: | 1995 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 404a | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1941 | | | | | | |
An esteemed scholar, teacher and administrator, Caroline Walker Bynum was born in Atlanta in 1941 and received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1969. She taught at Harvard from 1969-76, at the University of Washington from 1976-88 and at Columbia University from 1988-2003. From 1990-98, she held the Morris A. and Alma Schapiro Chair in History, and in 1999 she became University Professor, the first woman to hold this title at Columbia. From 1993-94 she was also Dean of the School of General Studies and Associate Vice President for Undergraduate Education at Columbia. In 2003 she joined the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, where she is now Professor Emeritus of Western European Middle Ages. Dr. Bynum's areas of expertise include the history of religion, especially late medieval theology, and the relationship between women and the religious vocation in the late Middle Ages. Her articles have won prizes from the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians and the Renaissance Society of America, and her book Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (1987) received the Governor's Award of the State of Washington and the Philip Schaff Prize of the American Society of Church History. Her book Fragmentation and Redemption (1991) received the Trilling Prize for the best book by a Columbia faculty member and the Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion: Analytical-Descriptive Category from the American Academy of Religion. Another book, The Resurrection of the Body (1995) received the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize of Phi Beta Kappa given for the best book of the year on "the intellectual and cultural condition of man," and the Jacques Barzun Prize of the American Philosophical Society for the best work in cultural history. Her book Metamorphosis and Identity (2001) explores medieval conceptions of self, survival, and mutability. Her book, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (2007), studies the cult of Christ's blood in its social, political and religious context and was awarded the American Academy of Religion's Award for Excellence in historical studies, the 2009 Otto Gründler Prize from the Medieval Institute, and the 2011 Haskins Medal. Her 2011 book, Christian Materiality, focuses on the Christian devotion to the wound in Christ's side. Her latest book is Dissimilar Similitudes: Devotional Objects in Late Medieval Europe (2020). Dr. Bynum has served as president of the American Historical Association and the Medieval Academy of America and has won numerous teaching awards. A MacArthur Fellow from 1986-91, she is also a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She was elected to the German Orden Pour le Merite fur Wissenschaften und Kunste in 2012 and was awarded the Grand Merit Cross with Star of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2013. | |
| 4 | Name: | Dr. Martha Craven Nussbaum | | | Institution: | University of Chicago Law School | | | Year Elected: | 1995 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 406. Linguistics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1947 | | | | | | |
Martha Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. She received her B.A. from New York University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. She has taught at Harvard, Brown and Oxford Universities. Dr. Nussbaum found in Aristotle and in the thinkers of the Hellenistic period arguments concerning the formation of ethical judgments and the healing of unruly desires that bear importantly on modern dilemmas. She is a public intellectual, offering relevant comments on moral issues, the role of literature and the nature of law.
From 1986-93, Dr. Nussbaum was a research advisor at the World Institute for Development Economics Research, Helsinki, a part of the United Nations University. She has chaired the Committee on International Cooperation and the Committee on the Status of Women of the American Philosophical Association, and has been a member of the Association's National Board.
Dr. Nussbaum received the Brandeis Creative Arts Award in Non-Fiction in 1990 and the PEN Spielvogel-Diamondstein Award for the best collection of essays in 1991; Cultivating Humanity won the Ness Book Award of the Association of American Colleges and Universities in 1998, and the Grawemeyer Award in Education in 2002. Sex and Social Justice won the book award of the North American Society for Social Philosophy in 2000. Some of Martha Nussbaum's most recent works are Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America's Tradition of Religious Equality (2008), Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010), The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age (2012), and Monarchy of Fear (2018). In 2009 she was awarded the A.SK prize by Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, an award that pays tribute to social system reformers, Phi Beta Kappa selected Nussbaum for the Sidney Hook Memorial Award in 2012, in 2018 she won the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture, and in 2021 she won the Holberg Prize. Martha Nussbaum was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1995. She won the Society's Henry M. Phillips Prize in 2009 in recognition of her intellectual leadership in philosophy, law and religion, including in particular her development and application of a "capabilities approach" to justice in a variety of contexts including women's rights in developing countries and worldwide, of the disabled and the impaired, and animal species. | |
| 5 | Name: | Dr. Arnold Rampersad | | | Institution: | Stanford University | | | Year Elected: | 1995 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 402a | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1941 | | | | | | |
Arnold Rampersad is the leading scholar of his generation in the field of African-American literature. His work on such major figures as Richard Wright, Langston Hughes and W.E.B. DuBois is widely recognized as scholarship of the highest order, marked as it is by impeccable research and an elegant prose style. Dr. Rampersad's two-volume biography The Life of Langston Hughes (1986-88) is widely praised as a masterpiece of literary/historical narrative, and his mastery of this form was also evident in Days of Grace (1993), a memoir written with the assistance of the late Arthur Ashe. His latest work is Visible Man, a biography of Ralph Ellison. Currently Professor of English, Senior Associate Dean and the Sara Hart Kimball Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University, Dr. Rampersad has also served on the faculties of the University of Virginia and Rutgers, Columbia and Princeton Universities. A member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, he has also edited several other works, including Slavery and the Literary Imagination and Race and American Culture. Perhaps more than any other scholar, Dr. Rampersad has made the study of African-American culture an integral part of intellectual life. He was awarded the 2010 National Humanities Medal by President Obama. He won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in 2012 and was awarded the Centennial Medal of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University in 2013. | |
| 6 | Name: | Dr. Charles Welles Rosen | | | Institution: | University of Chicago | | | Year Elected: | 1995 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 404. History of the Arts, Literature, Religion and Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1927 | | | Death Date: | December 9, 2012 | | | | | | |
Born in New York City, Charles Rosen enrolled at the Juilliard School at the age of six, leaving five years later to study with Moriz Rosenthal, a pupil of Liszt, and his wife, Hedwig Kanner, a pupil of Leschetizky. In 1951, the same year that Mr. Rosen received widespread critical acclaim for his New York debut, he received his Ph.D. in French literature from Princeton University and made his first recording, the world premiere on disc of Debussy's Etudes. The breadth of Dr. Rosen's endeavors reflected a remarkable synthesis of performing musician, scholar, writer and lecturer. First and foremost, however, he was one of the most widely respected pianists of his time. He earned international acclaim for his performances and recordings of a diverse repertoire ranging from Bach to works by this century's most important composers. He was particularly renowned for his interpretations of Beethoven and the Romantic repertoire, especially the works of Chopin, Schumann and Liszt. Dr. Rosen wrote extensively in the fields of music, art, literature and intellectual history. Among his most celebrated books is The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, which won the National Book Award for Arts and Letters and has been translated into seven languages. His books include Beethoven's Pianos Sonatas: A Short Companion (2002) and Piano Notes: The Hidden Life of the Pianist. Dr. Rosen held distinguished chairs and visiting professorships at leading universities in the United States and abroad, including the Charles Eliot Norton Chair of Poetics at Harvard University, and the University of Chicago, Oxford University, and the University of California. Among the awards he has received are an honorary Doctor of Music degree from Cambridge University, the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music in America from the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, and the 2011 National Humanities Medal. Dr. Rosen was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995. | |
| 7 | Name: | Dr. Charles A. Ryskamp | | | Institution: | The Frick Collection & Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 1995 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 404. History of the Arts, Literature, Religion and Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1928 | | | Death Date: | March 26, 2010 | | | | | | |
Charles Ryskamp is a professor at Princeton University and the Director Emeritus and Honorary Fellow of the Pierpont Morgan Library and the Frick Collection. A stellar example of a scholar and distinguished museum administrator, Dr. Ryskamp has published works on 18th century English art and is also the co-editor of the multi-volume editions of the writings of William Cowper as well as editions of other English authors. His tenure at the Pierpont Library (1969-87) was marked by significant acquisitions and an ambitious series of scholarly exhibitions, and as director of the Frick Collection (1987-97), he succeeded in energizing a traditional institution without altering its character or mission. A graduate of Yale University (Ph.D., 1956), Dr. Ryskamp has since been affiliated with Princeton University for over 50 years. He is a member of the board of the Metropolitan Opera, the Library of America and a number of similar organizations and a past president of the Association of Art Museum Directors and the Master Drawings Association. | |
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