Two Join Penn Arts and Sciences Faculty as Endowed Chairs

Dean Steven J. Fluharty is pleased to announce that two new faculty members are joining Penn Arts and Sciences as endowed chairs. Sophia Rosenfeld has been named the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History, and Kathleen D. Morrison the Sally and Alvin V. Shoemaker Professor of Anthropology and Curator of South Asia in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

A highly distinguished scholar of Enlightenment France and the Age of Revolutions, Rosenfeld was previously a professor of history at Yale University. She has published two widely-acclaimed books, Common Sense: A Political History (2011) and A Revolution in Language: The Problem of Signs in Late Eighteenth Century France (2001), and currently serves as co-editor of the journal Modern Intellectual History. Rosenfeld has held numerous prestigious fellowships, including the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, membership in the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, the Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship, and the American Council of Learned Societies Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship.

The late Ambassador Walter H. Annenberg received Penn’s Alumni Award of Merit in 1991. He and the late Honorable Leonore Annenberg were both emeritus trustees of the University. The Annenbergs endowed many chairs in Penn Arts and Sciences and made countless generous contributions to the University. They also founded the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in 1958.

Morrison was previously the Neukom Family Professor in Anthropology in the College at the University of Chicago. At Chicago, Morrison led the Paleoecology laboratory, which focused on the analysis of human-environment interactions across the later Holocene, and also served as director of the Center for International Studies, the South Asia Language and Area Center, and the Anthropology Department.

One of the world’s premiere archaeologists, Morrison’s research is focused on governing regimes, agricultural development, and their environmental impacts in the Deccan Plateau of South India. Her books include Daroji Valley: Landscape History, Place, and the Making of a Dryland Reservoir System (2009), The Vijayanagara Metropolitan Survey (2007), and Fields of Victory: Vijayanagra and the Course of Intensification (1995).

The Shoemakers established this professorship in 1989 in recognition of their strong commitment to the liberal arts at Penn and Sally Shoemaker’s service to the University Museum. Al Shoemaker, W’60, HON’95, has served Penn as a member and chairman of the University’s Board of Trustees. In 1994, he received Penn’s Alumni Award of Merit.