Maria Rosa Menocal, the R. Selden Rose Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and director of Special Programs in the Humanities, will serve as director of the Whitney Humanities Center for a three-year term beginning Jan. 1, 2002, President Richard C. Levin announced.

Norma Thompson, associate professor of political science and of Special Programs in the Humanities, was named associate director of the center for a five-year period beginning at the same time.

A scholar and historian of medieval culture and literature, and the author of many articles and reviews, Menocal has written five books, including "The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage," "Writing in Dante's Cult of Truth from Borges to Boccacio" and "Shards of Love: Exile and the Origins of the Lyric." She coedited "The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: Al-Andalus," which was published this year. Her book "A First-Rate Place: Medieval Spain and the Cultures of Tolerance" will be published next year.

Menocal joined the Yale faculty in 1986 as a visiting associate professor after teaching for six years at the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned her B.A. and Ph.D. degrees. She became a full professor at Yale in 1992. She was director of graduate studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and chaired the department 1996-99. She served on numerous University committees, and is currently finishing a term as chair of the President's Advisory Committee on Library Policy.

A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1995, Menocal was a Mellon postdoctoral fellow in comparative literature at Bryn Mawr College 1979-80.

Thompson is director of undergraduate studies in the humanities major. She joined the Yale faculty as an assistant professor in 1992 and became an associate professor in 1998. Her book "Herodotus and the Origins of the Political Community: Arion's Leap" was published by the Yale University Press in 1996, and her edition "Instilling Ethics" was published last year. Another book, "The Ship of State: Politics and Statecraft from Ancient Greece to Democratic America," is forthcoming.

Thompson received the Poorvu Family Prize for Teaching in Yale College in 1995. She was acting master of Berkeley College in the spring of 1995. She has received a John M. Olin Faculty Fellowship and has been appointed to a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

Next fall, while Menocal is on a leave of absence, Michael Holquist, professor of comparative literature and Slavic languages and literatures, will fill in as acting director of the Whitney Humanities Center. Holquist is a past fellow of the center and will be senior fellow during the 2001-02 academic year.

In announcing the appointments of Menocal and Thompson, Levin expressed gratitude to outgoing Whitney Humanities Center director Peter Brooks, who helped found the center and was its first director from 1981 to 1991. He was reappointed its director in 1996 -- making a total of 15 years served in the position. He will serve as the Eastman Professor at Oxford University next year and then return to full-time teaching at Yale.

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Campus Notes

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