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Faces
May 2001

Political scientist Robert Putnam, whose book Bowling Alone decries the lack of civic activity in contemporary American culture, brought his argument to Yale on March 8 in a panel discussion sponsored by Dwight Hall, the Yale Club of New Haven, and the Tercentennial Office. Putnam, a professor at Harvard, blamed television and the dual-career family for the decline of community groups and activities, but said that the Internet may offer some hope: “Internet usage comes at the expense of television-watching. It could be a stealth weapon against TV.”

To launch National Eating Disorders Week on campus, plus-size supermodel Emme spoke at a Calhoun College master’s tea on March 1 about her struggle with her body image. A former varsity rower at Syracuse, Emme said that she had to go through counseling to accept her body as it was. When she was approached about modeling, she was a size 12, but the agency wanted a size 14. “I said ‘You want me to gain weight?’” she recalled. “I made a size 14 quite quickly.”

Morse College will get a pair of psychologists in the master’s house this fall. Professor of psychology and linguistics Frank Keil will be the college’s new master, succeeding Stanton Wheeler. Keil has been at Yale since 1998. His wife, Kristi Lockhart, an associate research scientist and lecturer in psychology, will be the college’s associate master. They have three sons; the oldest, Derek, is a sophomore in Jonathan Edwards.

Arts impresario Patrick McCaughey will leave the directorship of the Center for British Art when his term is up in June. McCaughey, who came to the BAC in 1996 from the Wadsworth Atheneum, boosted attendance at the Center during his tenure and brought more 20th-century British art to its halls. He also presided over a renovation of the building and a reinstallation of its collections. McCaughey will stay at Yale as a senior research fellow next year; deputy director Constance Clement will serve as acting director.

Law professor Drew Days '66LLB has had his share of high appointments (U.S. solicitor general, assistant attorney general), but none quite so unusual as this: In March, Days was selected by the Committee of the Proprietors of the Common and Undivided Lands to join its ranks, making him one of the five people who control the New Haven Green. Days is the first African American to be appointed to the self-perpetuating board.

Sterling Professor Emeritus of English Maynard Mack '32, ‘36PhD, a world-renowned expert on Pope and Shakespeare, died at home in New Haven on March 17 at the age of 90. Mack spent his entire career at Yale, serving as chair of the English department in the 1960s and earning the Sterling Professorship in 1965. He is best known for editing the Twickenham Edition of Alexander Pope’s poems. He is survived by his wife Florence and three children.

Close-Up: Divinity’s New Dean

Rebecca Chopp, who was named the 13th dean of the Divinity School in March, may be coming to Yale from the position of provost and vice president of Emory University, but she began her career on the front lines of Christianity, as a United Methodist minister in Kansas. Serving as a pastor in small rural churches in the early 1970s, Chopp says she learned lessons that affected her later work as a theological scholar.

Chopp says she “discovered theology as a subject and was utterly captivated” while a student at Kansas Wesleyan University. She became an ordained minister while still an undergraduate, and continued to serve churches while in seminary at St. Paul School of Theology in graduate school at the University of Chicago.

Upon finishing her PhD in 1983, Chopp took a teaching job at Chicago. Two years later, she moved to the Candler School of Theology at Emory, where she was named provost three years ago. Besides her work as an administrator, Chopp has written widely about rethinking Christian faith and practice based on lessons of feminism and other liberation movements.

At Yale, where she will be the first woman to lead the Divinity School, Chopp says she wants to lead the School in exploring such 21st-century questions as “how to understand Christianity as a world religion and how to shape Christian witness in a pluralistic culture and world.” She also will oversee a long period of renovations as the school remakes the Sterling Divinity Quadrangle, and will have to address the financial issues that come with leading a School without major research grants or wealthy alumni. Her experience in the provost’s chair will surely help. As she reminded the audience at the announcement of her hiring, “I also understand a wee bit about budgets and administration.”  

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