Faculty members Peter Brooks and Robert J. Shiller are among the 51 scholars and leaders recently elected into the renowned American Philosophical Society.
Historian Garry Wills, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman and Academy of Natural Sciences president James Baker are among the other new members of the international organization, which is the oldest society in the United States devoted to scholarly and scientific research. Founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin, the society counted George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and John Marshall among its earliest members. Other members have since included John James Audubon, Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, George Marshall and Robert Frost.
The society has five divisions: mathematical and physical sciences; biological sciences; social sciences; humanities; and the arts, learned professions and public affairs. Brooks was chosen in the humanities division and Shiller was elected in the social sciences division.
Brooks, who is Sterling Professor of French and Comparative Literature, is a literary scholar who specializes on the French 19th-century novel, European romanticism and the theory of narrative. He is also noted for scholarly work cutting across several disciplines, including law and psychiatry. His books include "Troubling Confessions: Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature," "Psychoanalysis and Storytelling" and "The Novel of Worldliness." With Yale law professor Paul Gewirtz, Brooks edited "Law's Stories," and has edited or co-edited numerous other books. He also wrote a novel, titled "World Elsewhere," which is based on a real-life prince's expedition to Tahiti.
A member of the Yale faculty since 1965, Brooks was the founding director of the Whitney Humanities Center 1980-1991, and held that post again 1997-2001. His numerous administrative posts include serving as chair of the Departments of French and Comparative Literature, associate editor of Yale French Studies and acting master of Pierson College. This year, he presented a series of public lectures titled "Visions of the Real" as the William Clyde DeVane Professor.
Shiller, the Stanley B. Resor Professor of Economics at the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, is a pioneer in the application of psychology to understanding behavior in capital markets. He has written widely on financial markets, behavioral economics, macroeconomics, real estate and statistical methods, and on public attitudes, opinions and moral judgments regarding markets. His books include "Market Volatility," "Macro Markets: Creating Institutions for Managing Society's Largest Economic Risks" (winner of the Paul A. Samuelson Award from TIAA-CREF), "Irrational Exuberance" (a New York Times non-fiction bestseller and winner of the 2000 Commonfund Prize), and the recently published "The New Financial Order: Risk in the Twenty-First Century."
A member of the Yale faculty since 1982, Shiller co-founded two firms in Cambridge, Massachusetts -- Case Shiller Weiss, Inc., an economics research and information firm, and Macro Securities Research LLC, which promotes securitization of unusual risks. He has been interviewed widely by the media on the issue of stock market and investor behavior. He has been a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a member of the Academic Advisory Panel for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
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