Two named to academy

A political scientist and geographer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for 2002.

Virginia Sapiro, Sophonisba P. Breckinridge Professor of Political Science and Women’s Studies, and Yi-Fu Tuan, John Kirtland Wright and Vilas Research Professor of Geography, join 3,700 American fellows and 600 honorary members from other countries.

Sapiro is an authority on gender, political participation and public opinion. She is a former director of the American National Election Studies. In the classroom, she regularly teaches courses from introductions to women’s studies to graduate seminars in research design. She has been a member of the UW–Madison faculty since 1976.

Yi-Fu Tuan has written on subjects as wide-ranging as aesthetics and nature to the symbolism of the American urban landscape. His most recent book is “Dear Colleague: Common and Uncommon Observations” (2002, University of Minnesota Press). He has been on the faculty here since 1983.

Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an international learned society composed of the world’s leading scientists, scholars, artists, business people and public figures. Goals include promoting service and study of critical social and intellectual issues and the development of practical policy alternatives, fostering public engagement and the exchange of ideas, mentoring a new generation of scholars and thinkers and honoring excellence by electing to members in a broad range of disciplines.