Two new heads of academic sections and a new assistant dean for development have been announced in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. The announcements were made by Philip Khoury, dean of SHASS.
Professor Evan Ziporyn will serve as head of the music and theater arts section for a three-year term starting in spring 2003, succeeding Professor Ellen Harris.
Ziporyn received the B.A. in music from Yale University, and the M.A. and Ph.D. in music composition from the University of California at Berkeley. While on the faculty of MIT since 1990, Professor Ziporyn has also served as adjunct associate professor and visiting professor at Yale School of Music.
An active composer and performer, he regularly records and performs with Bang On a Can and Steve Reich; he is also director of MIT's Balinese Gamelan Galak Tika. His principal areas of interest are composition and world music.
Professor Jean Jackson will head the anthropology program for two years beginning this fall, replacing Professor Susan Slyomovics. While Jackson is on leave in spring 2003, Professor James Howe will serve as interim head.
Jackson received the B.A. from Wellesley College, and the M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. On the faculty of MIT since 1972, she has carried out fieldwork in Mexico, Guatemala and the Vaupes region in southeastern Colombia. Her earlier Latin American research interests included small-scale societies, kinship and marriage, gender and anthropological linguistics. Her continuing interest in social and ethnic identity more recently has focused on the indigenous movement in Colombia and Latin America in general. She has also conducted research on the anthropology of chronic pain.
Anne Marie Michel is the new assistant dean for development, effective Sept. 1.
Before spending the last three years with Techfoundation, a firm specializing in consulting for nonprofit organizations, Michel served for several years in MIT's Resource Development Office as associate director of foundation relations and director of development for the MIT Libraries. She spent part of this time working with various areas of SHASS in fund-raising activities, so she's familiar with many of the school's faculty as well as with MIT development operations in general.
SHASS "is very fortunate to have been able to bring Anne Marie Michel back to MIT," Khoury said. "It's a pleasure to work with her again in her new capacity as our school's chief fund-raising officer."
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on September 25, 2002.
