CUNY Newswire

June 28, 2010 | The University

A renowned political theorist, a widely-read philosopher of the mind, an internationally-known scholar of Hispanic literature, a much-produced playwright and an award-winning poet were named Distinguished Professors, the highest faculty rank, by The City University of New York Board of Trustees on June 28.

Uday Singh Mehta, who can teach political thought from Aristotle through the twentieth century, was appointed Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the CUNY Graduate Center.  He has taught at Princeton, Cornell, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and most recently as the Clarence Francis Professor in the Social Sciences at Amherst College.  He graduated from Swarthmore College and earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University.  Dr. Mehta’s books include The Anxiety of Freedom: Imagination and Individuality in the Political Thought of John Locke, and Liberalism and Empire: Nineteenth Century British Liberal Thought, which won the coveted J. David Greenstone Book Award from the American Political Science Association.  His current work includes two monographs—one a comparative approach to constitutionalism; the other addresses the politics of nonviolence.

Alva Noe, who comes to the CUNY Graduate Center from UCLA/Berkeley where he was a member of the philosophy faculty since 2003, is considered one of the most widely-read and engaging philosophers in the areas of contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive science. A graduate of Columbia University, he earned a B.Phil. from Oxford University and a Ph.D. from Harvard.  His books include Action in Perception, and Out of Our Heads: Why You are Not Your Brain and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness. Professor Noe’s multiple and multidisciplinary research interests include neuroscience and psychology.  His current research concerns the neurophysiological basis for the human propensity to create and enjoy artwork.  This work will be published in a book to be titled Strange Tools: Art and Nature, to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Paul Julian Smith, named Distinguished Professor of Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages at the CUNY Graduate Center, is renowned for his scholarship in Hispanic literature, film and television studies.  A member of the British Academy, he earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Cambridge, where he currently serves as Professor of Spanish.  Among Dr. Smith’s many books are Writing in the Margins: Spanish Literature in the Golden Age. Desire Unlimited: the Cinema of Pedro Almodovar, and The Theater of Garcia Lorca: Text, Performance, Psychoanalysis.  He is founding editor of the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies and the editor of the book series Oxford Hispanic Studies, both of which are published by Oxford University Press.  He was a Visiting Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center during the Fall 2009 semester.

Playwright Mac Wellman, was named Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College, where has been a member of the faculty since 1998 and currently serves as the Donald I. Fine Professor of Playwriting at the College.  Professor Wellman’s role in the world of experimental theater, where dozens of his original plays have been produced in theaters across the country, has earned him an extensive list of awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and  multiple Village Voice Obie awards, including one for Lifetime Achievement.  In addition to his prodigious creative output, he has published books of poetry and short stories and edited or contributed to many anthologies.  He has also served as an important mentor to other playwrights.   In addition to teaching at Brooklyn College, he has taught play writing at TheatreWorks in Singapore, The Yale School of Drama, Princeton University , Amherst College and at many other settings.

Poet Thomas Sleigh was named Distinguished Professor at Hunter College where he has been on the faculty since 2006.  Since 2007 he has served as program director for Hunter’s widely respected Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing.  He is the author of seven books of poetry with an eighth scheduled for publication next year.  His most recent book, Space Walk, published by Houghton Mifflin, won the prestigious Kingsley Tufts Award, which includes a prize of $100,000.  Among his many other honors are the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Academy Award in Literature, the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, and a three-year Individual Writers’ Award from Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Fund.  He has also received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He earned his MA in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University.  In addition to giving frequent readings of his own work throughout the United States and abroad, he has brought many eminent writers to the successful Distinguished Writer Series at Hunter College.

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