The Yale Corporation recently elected three faculty members to endowed posts. Dr. James L. Boyer has been named the Ensign Professor of Medicine; Giuseppe F. Mazzotta was designated the Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Italian Language and Literature; and David L. Quint was appointed the George M. Bodman Professor of English and Comparative Literature.
Dr. James L. Boyer concentrates his research on elucidating the basic physiologic mechanisms by which the liver transports and excretes bile acids and forms bile. He is chief of the Division of Digestive Diseases at the School of Medicine, director of the Yale Liver Research Center, and an attending physician at Yale-New Haven Hospital and the Veterans Administration Connecticut Healthcare System, West Haven campus formerly the West Haven Veterans Administration Medical Center . He has written more than 100 scientific papers which have appeared in publications such as the American Journal of Physiology, Gastroenterology, Physiological Review, the Journal of Clinical Investigation and the Journal of Cell Biology.
Dr. Boyer received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1962 and was head of the Liver Research Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University International Center for Medical Research and Training, Calcutta, India, 1964-66. He was an assistant professor of medicine at Yale 1969-72. After serving six years on the faculty of the University of Chicago and Pritzer School of Medicine, he rejoined the Yale faculty in 1978 as professor of medicine.
Dr. Boyer is president of the International Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, past president of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and a council member of the National Institutes of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases. He is chair of the advisory board of the Liver Research Center at the University of California, San Francisco, and has served on a number of administrative committees at Yale. He is the recipient of several awards and honors, including the international Adolf-Windaus Prize for outstanding achievement in the field of bile acid research and the Distinguished Achievement Award from the American Gastroenterological Association.
Giuseppe F. Mazzotta centers his work on medieval and Renaissance Italian literature up to Vico, with a particular focus on Dante. He served at Yale as assistant professor in the department of Romance languages 1970-72 and returned to the University in 1983 as professor of Italian. During the interim he served on the Cornell University and the University of Toronto faculties. Professor Mazzotta is the author of major works in his field, including books on Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch. Among them are "The Worlds of Petrarch," "Dante, Poet of the Desert: History and Allegory in the Divine Comedy," and "Dante's Vision and the Circle of Knowledge," which was selected as one of the Outstanding Academic Books of 1993 by the journal Choice. Among Professor Mazzotta's current projects is a forthcoming book on Vico.
Professor Mazzotta's professional memberships include the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics, and the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. In1993 he was elected to Honorary Membership Socio Onorario of the XVI century Accademia Cosentina, Italy. Other professional activities include membership on the advisory board of the "Italian Perspectives" series edited for University Texts, England, and membership on the executive committee of the Medieval Academy of America. He also has served on the editorial boards of Yale Italian Studies, Forum Italicum, Documents of the Renaissance, and New Vico Studies, among others, and he is a member of the board of directors of Institute for Vico Studies, Emory University.
Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, Sterling Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literature at Yale, describes Professor Mazzotta as "one of the leading critics of Italian literature of this century and among the best of all time. But to say that Professor Mazzotta is the best Italianist today is to diminish his stature. He is one of the best literary minds at Yale and anywhere else."
David Louis Quint, a specialist in the literature of the European Renaissance, received his bachelor's degree from Yale in 1971 and his Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University in 1976. He returned to Yale as professor of comparative literature and English in 1991, after serving 15 years on the Princeton University faculty.
Professor Quint has authored scores of books, articles and reviews. Among them are the books "The Stanze of Angelo Poliziano," "Origin and Originality in Renaissance Literature: Versions of the Source," and "Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton." He currently is developing a series of essays on "Don Quijote" which may become a book, and also is developing a book on aristocracy and aristocratic identity in European culture primarily in the 16th and 17th centuries. The work examines the dynamics taking place "as a culture of feudal honor faced the emergence of a new culture of the court," says Professor Quint, "and as these two cultures found representation in literature. My essay on boasting in 'Creative Imitation' is envisioned as the first chapter of this book, which will also look at duelling, hunting, gambling, living on credit, the nobleman and the city, aristocrats and lovemaking." This spring Professor Quint will teach a course on the literature, art and thought of the Renaissance for the students majoring in humanities and literature.
Professor Quint is the recipient of several awards and honors, including a Danforth Graduate Fellowship; a Fulbright-Hays Travelling Fellowship to Italy; a Fellowship to the Villa I Tatti, the Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies; and National Endowment for the Humanities grants. He also received the William Nelson Prize from Renaissance Quarterly. He is on the editorial boards of the journals Comparative Literature, Modern Language Quarterly, I Tatti Studies, and Morgana.