Princeton Weekly Bulletin February 8, 1999
Board appoints three to tenure
The board of trustees has appointed three to the tenured faculty:
Julio Ramos, professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, and Edmund White, professor in the Council of the Humanities and Creative Writing, whose appointments begin February 1, and Michael Strauss, who has been promoted to associate professor of astrophysical sciences as of July 1.
Ramos, a specialist in 19th-century Latin American literature, comes to Princeton from the University of California, Berkeley, where he has been professor and chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. A 1977 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, he received his 1979 MA from the University of Texas, Austin and his 1986 PhD from Princeton. He has taught at the University of Puerto Rico, Humacao and Emory University as well as at Berkeley, where he joined the faculty in 1989.
He is author, most recently, of Desencuentros de la modernidad en América Latina: literatura y política en el siglo XIX.
White, a writer of novels and plays as well as criticism, is a lecturer at Princeton. Professor at Brown University from 1990 to 1992, he previously taught at Columbia School of the Arts and Johns Hopkins University. His 1962 bachelor's degree is from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
White's books include The Farewell Symphony (1997), Our Paris: Sketches From Memory (1995), The Burning Library: Essays (1994, ed. D. Bergman) and Genet: A Biography (1993). In 1993 he was named Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French government; in 1997 he was made a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Strauss, who became assistant professor at Princeton 1994, is a 1984 graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where earned his PhD in 1989. After two years as Norris Fellow at Caltech, he joined the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1991 .
Strauss, whose field is optical extragalactic astronomy, says, "I study the properties of galaxies, and their large-scale distribution in space, with special interest in what this can tell us about cosmological models--i.e., the Big Bang, whether the universe will expand forever or eventually recollapse, how did galaxies form, and so on." He is also "very involved" in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. He teaches introductory astronomy for nonmajors and "recently taught a freshman seminar on the search for extraterrestrial life."
Recent honors include Sloan Foundation and Cottrell fellowships, and the 1996 Newton Lacy Pierce Prize of the American Astronomical Society. Strauss has published nearly 60 papers in refereed journals.
The board also approved the appointment of Daniel Sigman, assistant professor of geosciences, for three and one half years beginning February 1, 2000. A research associate at the University since 1998, Sigman is interested in geochemistry, biogeochemistry and paleoclimatology. He has a 1991 BS from Stanford University and a 1997 PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In the Council of the Humanities and Program in Theater and Dance, Michael Cadden has been promoted to senior lecturer for three years, beginning July 1, 1999.
Reappointments
The following assistant professors have been reappointed for three years, beginning July 1:
In Anthropology, Isabelle Nabokov; in Classics, Ruth Webb; in Computer Science, Perry Cook; in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Thomas Coombs-Hahn; in Economics, Robert Shimer; in English, Patricia Crain and D. Vance Smith; in History, Ruth Rogaski; in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Edgar Choueiri; in Physics, Suzanne Staggs and Albert Young; in Politics, Tali Mendelberg; in Romance Languages and Literatures, Lucía Melgar; in the Woodrow Wilson School and Economics, John Morgan; in the Woodrow Wilson School and Politics, Kathleen McNamara, Kenneth Schultz and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss; and in the Woodrow Wilson School and Sociology, Joshua Goldstein. In Sociology, Sara Curran has been reappointed for four years, including a one-year extension.
The following assistant professors have been reappointed for one year beginning July 1:
In Art and Archaeology, Todd Porterfield; in Comparative Literature, Stathis Gourgouris; in Economics, Pinelopi Goldberg; in Molecular Biology, Thomas Vogt; in Philosophy, Gopal Sreenivasan; and in Politics, Carlos Forment.
In Molecular Biology, Robert Ho, and in Romance Languages and Literatures, Soraya Tlatli, have been reappointed for a one-year extension beginning July 1.