UW Regents Approve Five Named Professorships

The appointment of five faculty to named professorships was approved by the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents at its March meeting.

Kelly Cherry has been named the Eudora Welty Professor of English. Cherry is an internationally acclaimed author of more than 15 books and chapbooks, and she has published more than 400 poems in numerous magazines, journals and anthologies. For her poetry, The Fellowship of Southern Writers made Cherry the first recipient of the Hanes Prize in recognition of a distinguished body of work. Her newest collection of poems, Death and Transfiguration, is forthcoming. Eudora Welty is a 1929 UW graduate and widely known novelist, essayist and short fiction writer. She still lives and writes in Jackson, Miss., where she was born in 1909. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Welty and William Faulkner, a fellow Mississipian, have been credited with establishing everyday Southern life as a literary subject of universal implication.

Anatoly M. Khazanov has been named the Ernest Gellner Professor of Anthropology. Prior to joining the faculty in 1990, Khazanov worked at the Academy of Sciences in the Soviet Union. After emigrating from there, he taught at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He is the author and editor of 10 books, 200 articles and other publications. Khazanov is a Fellow of the British Academy and was a 1993-94 Guggenheim Fellow. Research interests include ethnicity and nationalism, modernization and socio/cultural change, religion, pastoral nomadism and the former communist countries. Ernest Gellner is considered one of the most influential post-war generation social thinkers. He made contributions in very diverse fields, from anthropology to philosophy and sociology. Gellner taught at the University of Cambridge, the London School of Economics and during his career published more than 20 books and several hundred articles.

Judith W. Leavitt has been named the Ruth Bleier Professor of the History of Medicine, History of Science, and Women’s Studies. Leavitt is an internationally recognized scholar on the history of public health and women’s health in America. Leavitt is one of the founding faculty of the Women’s Studies Program, was the Evjue-Bascom Professor of Women’s Studies from 1990 to 1995 and became associate dean for faculty in the Medical School in 1996. Her current research includes home health care during the antibiotic transition, 1935-1960, and hospitalized childbirth in the 20th century. Ruth Bleier, an internationally known physician, feminist scholar and neuroanatomist, was also one of the founders of the Women’s Studies Program. At the time of her death in 1988, she was professor of neurophysiology and women’s studies at UW–Madison.

Deane F. Mosher has been named the Robert F. Schilling Professor of Medicine. Mosher serves the Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer Center as professor of medicine, and as head of the hematology section and the Hematologic Oncology Program. He is a pioneering investigator in how cells interact with molecules deposited in their immediate environment. These interactions help determine whether cells proliferate and differentiate and control diverse processes ranging from early embryogenesis to metastasis of cancer cells. Based on his research, the cell-matrix interactions field has burgeoned. Robert F. Schilling is Washburn Professor of Medicine and Professor of Nutritional Sciences at UW–Madison. He is best known for his discovery of what is known worldwide as the Schilling test — the original and still definitive method of diagnosing pernicious anemia and other disorders of vitamin B12 metabolism.

Edwin Vedejs has been named the Robert M. Bock Professor of Chemistry. Vedejs, who joined the faculty in 1967, was born in Latvia in 1941 and emigrated to the United States around 1950 after his family fled their native country to escape the Soviet takeover. His research interests focus on the construction of complex organic molecules and include conceptual, mechanistic and preparative aspects of organic synthesis. Robert M. Bock began his research career in the Biochemistry Department where he rose to the rank of professor in 1961. He moved to molecular biology in 1965, and served as dean of the Graduate School in addition to maintaining an active research program from 1967 to 1989, when he retired. Bock guided the Graduate School’s research support activities during a period when there was a major expansion of research faculty at the university.