| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Robert Alter | | | Institution: | University of California, Berkeley | | | Year Elected: | 2001 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 402b | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1935 | | | | | | |
A number of Robert Alter's twenty-two books have been translated into several languages. As a critic in both of his fields, Hebrew Literature of all ages and Modernism, he emphasizes the virtures of close reading and broad sympathies over ideological commitment, though in his work with students he has shown a tolerance which has produced some of the leading lights in the postmodern camp. Dr. Alter is fluent in French and Hebrew and reads a number of other languages. He is an exemplary academic citizen: a thoughtful and engaged colleague, willing to take on administrative chores; a popular teacher and director of a host of dissertations; an immensely productive scholar; a good friend to many; and absolutely without a shred of the diva in him. He is internationally known, with strong connections in Britain, France, and Israel. Since 1967 he has served on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where he is Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature. His most recent book is a translation of the Hebrew Bible, entitled Ancient Israel. The Former Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. A Translation with Commentary. | |
| 2 | Name: | Dr. Kwame Anthony Appiah | | | Institution: | New York University | | | Year Elected: | 2001 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 406. Linguistics | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1954 | | | | | | |
K. Anthony Appiah has written or edited a score of books: on race theory (where he is recognized as a leading thinker), on philosophy (where he has been called by reviewers "a pro's pro"), and even a series of detective fiction novels. His In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture has been translated into Portuguese and Japanese. It won the Herskovits Award of the African Studies Association for the best work published in English on Africa in 1993. Dr. Appiah taught at Yale, Cornell, Duke and Harvard Universities before moving to Princeton University, where he was Laurence S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy. In January 2014 he moved to New York University where he has joint appointments in the Department of Philosophy and the School of Law. He has received many academic honors, published numerous articles and reviews, presented public lectures and papers, holds several editorial positions and is a member of professional associations and committees. In 2008 he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Dr. Appiah also served as co-editor of Encarta Africana, the first electronic encyclopedia on Africa and people of African descent. His latest books are Experiments in Ethics (2008) and The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen (2010). He was awarded the 2011 National Humanities Medal by President Obama. | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Roger S. Bagnall | | | Institution: | New York University; Columbia University | | | Year Elected: | 2001 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 404a | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1947 | | | | | | |
Roger Bagnall received his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto in 1972. He was assistant professor of classics at Florida State University for two years before moving in 1974 to Columbia University, where he served as professor of classics and history and as dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. In 2007 he became professor of ancient history and Leon Levy Director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, becoming Director Emeritus in 2016 and professor emeritus in 2017. Among the leading historians of Greek and Roman antiquity, Dr. Bagnall enjoys an immense reputation for his work on Roman and Late Antique Egypt, its economy, and its documents on papyri and potsherds. His technical expertise in papyrology is matched by a historical mind of great range. He has also been a pioneer in the application of computer technology to the humanities. Dr. Bagnall has written or edited more than sixty books and over 250 articles, including The Administration of the Ptolemaic Possessions Outside Egypt (1976); Currency and Inflation in Fourth-Century Egypt (1985); (co-author) Consuls of the Later Roman Empire (1987); Egypt in Late Antiquity (1993); (co-author) The Demography of Roman Egypt (1994); The Kellis Agricultural Account Book (1997); The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology (2009); Everyday Writing in the Graeco-Roman East (2011); An Oasis City (2015); and Roman Egypt (2021). A brilliant and respected administrator as well as an internationally known scholar, Dr. Bagnall has served as director and president of the American Society of Papyrologists, president of the International Association of Papyrologists, and director and president of the American Philological Association (now the Society for Classical Studies) and is a member of the American Numismatic Society, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the British Academy and l'Académie Royale de Belgique. In 2019 Dr. Bagnall was appointed Honorary President for Life of the American Society of Papyrologists and Honorary President of the International Association of Papyrologists. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2001and was elected its President in 2023. | |
| 4 | Name: | Professor Paul Bernard | | | Institution: | L'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris | | | Year Elected: | 2001 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 401. Archaeology | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1929 | | | Death Date: | December 1, 2015 | | | | | | |
Paul Bernard was a member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Fine Letters (Institute of France, Paris) since 1992. After studies in Paris (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Sorbonne), he received archaeological training at the French School in Athens (1958-1961) and then became a member of the French Institute of Archaeology in Beirut (1961-1965). He quickly specialized in the archaeology and history of Hellenism east of the Mediterranean shores.
In 1965, Professor Bernard became director of the French archaeological mission in Afghanistan and, until 1978, he headed the excavations, by a French team, of a Greek colonial city in Northern Afghanistan at the site, now completely plundered, of Aï Khanum.
Upon his return to France, he taught graduate and postgraduate courses at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Sorbonne) on the history of Hellenism in the Orient. He was an associate member of the Italian Academia dei Lincei and of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society in 2001. Paul Bernard died December 1, 2015, at the age of 86, in Paris, France. | |
| 5 | Name: | Professor Michael A. Cook | | | Institution: | Princeton University | | | Year Elected: | 2001 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 404b | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1940 | | | | | | |
Michael Cook is the Class of 1943 Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He was educated at Cambridge, studying English and European History as well as learning Turkish and Persian. From Cambridge he went on to the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, where his work focused on Ottoman population history in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He taught Middle Eastern history at the School until 1986 when he left to join the faculty at Princeton. A prolific author, Professor Cook's publications include Early Muslim Dogma: A Source-Critical Study (1981), The Koran (2000), Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (2000), A Brief History of the Human Race (2003), and Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspective (2014). His current areas of interest include the formation of Islamic civilization and the role played by religious values in that process. He has been the recipient of many awards and honors, including the Holberg Prize in 2014, the President's Award for Distinguished Teaching (awarded at Princeton's 2016 Commencement), the Balzan Prize for Islamic Studies in 2019, and the Middle East Medievalists Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020. In 2018 he was named Honorary Fellow at King's College London. Michael Cook was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society in 2001. | |
| 6 | Name: | Dr. Patricia Crone | | | Institution: | Institute for Advanced Study | | | Year Elected: | 2001 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1945 | | | Death Date: | July 11, 2015 | | | | | | |
Patricia Crone was a brilliant historian who illuminated the social history of early Islam, the meaning of legal systems, and the history of trade. She had extended her expertise to general stories of social history and to the edition and translation of texts. A native of Denmark, Dr. Crone received her Ph.D. from the University of London's School of Oriental Studies in 1974 and went on to teach at Oxford University (1977-90) and Cambridge University (1990-97) before joining the Institute for Advanced Study as Mellon Professor from 1997-2014. Dr. Crone's many publications include (with M. Cook) Hagarism (1977); Slaves on Horses (1980); Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law (1987); Meccan Trade (1987); Pre-Industrial Societies (1989); The Book of Strangers (1999); and Medieval Islamic Political Thought (2005). Her book From Arabian Tribes to Islamic Empire: Army, State and Society in the Near East c. 600-850 (2008) is a collection of articles that study the development of early Muslim society. The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran: Rural Revolt and Local Zoroastrianism earned four major awards. In 2013 she was awarded the Giorgio Levi Della Vida Medal for Excellence in Islamic Studies. Patricia Crone died July 11, 2015, at age 70 in Princeton, New Jersey. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2001. | |
| 7 | Name: | Dr. Eugene F. Rice | | | Institution: | Columbia University | | | Year Elected: | 2001 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 405. History and Philology, East and West, through the 17th Century | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1924 | | | Death Date: | August 4, 2008 | | | | | | |
Eugene F. Rice, Jr. received a Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1953. He was a professor at Cornell University for nine years before moving to Columbia University in 1964. He has been the William R. Shepherd Professor of History Emeritus at Columbia University since 1995. Dr. Rice has been a major force in the study of Renaissance history for 45 years. His first book, The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom (1958), established his reputation for rigorous research and imaginative writing. His massive edition of the Latin Prefatory Epistles of Jacques Lefèvre d'Etaples and Related Texts (1972) is a wonderful work of technical scholarship with the broadest implications for the study of humanism and cultural history. And his prize-winning St. Jerome in the Renaissance (1985) is a subtle study of the intersections of theology, hagiography, and imagery in the visual arts. A winner of Columbia's "Great Teacher's Award," he is as excellent a teacher as he is a scholar. He served as the Executive Director of the Renaissance Society of America for 20 years and was chairman of both Columbia's History Department and its Society of Fellows. His recent work includes a comprehensive study of "Western Homosexualities," from the Greeks to the present. Broad in his intellectual interests, especially in music and art, he is energetic, vivacious, and sociable. Honors Dr. Rice has received include the Philip Schaff Prize of the American Society of Church History, the John Gilmary Shea Prize of the American Catholic Association, the Prize in History from the American Academy of Religion, and a Festschrift in his honor in 1991. Dr. Rice was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2001. | |
| 8 | Name: | Dr. Kirk Varnedoe | | | Institution: | Institute for Advanced Study & The Museum of Modern Art | | | Year Elected: | 2001 | | | Class: | 4. Humanities | | | Subdivision: | 404. History of the Arts, Literature, Religion and Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1946 | | | Death Date: | August 14, 2003 | | | | |
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