Princeton University

Six new faculty members appointed

Princeton NJ — The Board of Trustees has approved the appointments of six new faculty members — three to full professor and three to assistant professor.

The appointments to full professor include two being named to endowed professorships: David MacMillan as the A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Organic Chemistry, effective June 1, 2006; and Muhammad Zaman as the Robert H. Niehaus ’77 Professor of Near Eastern Studies and Religion, effective July 1, 2006.

In addition, Anne Cheng, who earned her bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, from Princeton in 1985, has been appointed a professor of English, effective July 1, 2006.

MacMillan is coming to Princeton from the California Institute of Technology, where he has been on the faculty since 2000. Previously, he taught at the University of California-Berkeley and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University.

MacMillan’s research focuses on organic synthesis. He is the recipient of many honors for his research as well as his teaching, including a Sloan Fellowship in 2002 and a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award in 2003.

A graduate of the University of Glasgow, MacMillan earned his doctorate from the University of California-Irvine.

Zaman, a leading scholar of contemporary Muslim studies, is the first holder of the Niehaus chair, which will bring an interdisciplinary focus to this subject. He has taught in the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University since 1997.

He is the author of “The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change” (Princeton University Press, 2002) and “Religions and Politics Under the Early Abbasids: The Emergence of the Proto-Sunni Elite.” His many articles concern topics such as religious authority in Islam, the history of Islamic law and Islamic cosmopolitanism.

Zaman has received several fellowships, including from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Humanities Center. During this academic year, he has been a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Zaman earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of the Punjab in Lahore, Pakistan, his master’s degree from Quaid-i Azam University in Islamabad and his doctoral degree from McGill University in Montreal.

Cheng will come to Princeton from the University of California-Berkeley, where she has taught since 1995. She also has taught at Harvard University.

Her fields of specialization are Asian American and African American literature. She is the author of “The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation and Hidden Grief,” and numerous book chapters and journal articles. She is also a published poet.

Cheng earned her master’s degree from Stanford and her doctoral degree from the University of California-Berkeley.

The appointments to assistant professor are:

Zahid Chaudhary, to be appointed assistant professor of English for a three-year term, effective Sept. 1, 2006. A specialist in colonial and postcolonial literature, he has been a faculty member at the University of Washington since 2004. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Colby College and a doctoral degree from Cornell University.

Joy Kim, to be appointed assistant professor of East Asian studies for a three-year term, effective July 1, 2006. Kim’s research and teaching focus on Korean history. She has been on the faculty at Claremont McKenna College since 2005, and previously was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins University and her doctoral degree from Columbia University.

Nino Zchomelidse, to be appointed assistant professor of art and archaeology for a three-year term, effective Sept. 1, 2006. A specialist in medieval art, she will come to Princeton from her current position as a research fellow at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. She has taught at the John Cabot University in Rome and the University of Tübingen in Germany. She also has been a postdoctoral fellow at Gerda-Henkel-Stiftung in Düsseldorf. Zchomelidse earned her master’s degree from the University of Munich and her doctoral degree from the University of Bern.