This year's selections drawn from Arts & Science, Abu Dhabi, and the Tisch School of the Arts.
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has elected four New York University faculty as 2023 fellows: Marisa Carrasco, a professor in the Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science; Paula England, dean of social science at NYU Abu Dhabi; Pamela Newkirk, a professor in the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute; and Richard Schechner, a professor emeritus at the Tisch School of the Arts.
“With the election of these members, the Academy is honoring excellence, innovation, and leadership and recognizing a broad array of stellar accomplishments,” said David Oxtoby, president of the American Academy. “We hope every new member celebrates this achievement and joins our work advancing the common good.”
Among the other 269 academy members elected this year are the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Gustavo Dudamel, author and journalist Michael Lewis, musical theater composer, actor, director, and producer Lin-Manuel Miranda, writer, director, and producer Shonda Rhimes, and actress and producer Michelle Yeoh.
The complete list of individuals elected in 2023, including 40 International Honorary Members from 23 countries, is available on the academy’s website.
Marisa Carrasco, Julius Silver Professor of Psychology and Neural Science and Collegiate Professor at NYU, investigates the relationship between the psychological and physiological mechanisms involved in visual perception and attention, using a variety of methods from cognitive neuroscience. Her recent research centers on the differential effects on performance, sensory representations, brain regions, and mechanisms mediating the deployment of endogenous (voluntary) and exogenous (involuntary) attention.
Paula England, dean of social science and a professor of social research and public policy at NYU Abu Dhabi, is also Julius Silver Professor of Sociology at NYU. Her research includes studies on gender inequality at work and at home; she has written on the sex gap in pay, occupational segregation, how couples divide housework, and the wage penalty for motherhood. England’s more recent work deals with changing family patterns in the US and how they differ by social class. She studies the higher rates of unintended births among disadvantaged single young adults and is also examining changes in sexual behavior among youth and young adults.
Pamela Newkirk, a professor in the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, is a journalist and scholar whose authored books include Diversity, Inc.: The Failed Promise of a Billion-Dollar Business, Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga, and Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media. She is also the editor of Letters from Black America and A Love No Less: More Than Two Centuries of African American Love Letters. Part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team at New York Newsday, Newkirk has written articles on media, race, and African American art and culture for numerous publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Nation, and ARTnews.
Richard Schechner, University Professor Emeritus and editor of TDR: The Drama Review, is a theater director, author, and theorist. He is a founder of NYU’s Department of Performance Studies and of the experimental theater companies, the Performance Group and East Coast Artists. His books include Public Domain, Environmental Theater, Performance Theory, Between Theater and Anthropology, The Future of Ritual, Performed Imaginaries, and Performance Studies: An Introduction. His theater productions include Dionysus in 69, Commune, The Tooth of Crime, Mother Courage and Her Children, Makbeth, Hamlet, and Performed Imaginaries.
Academy members have included: Benjamin Franklin (1781), Alexander Hamilton (1791), Ralph Waldo Emerson (1864), Maria Mitchell (1848), Charles Darwin (1874), Albert Einstein (1924), Robert Frost (1931), Margaret Mead (1948), Milton Friedman (1959), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1966), Antonin Scalia (2003), Judy Woodruff (2012), John Legend (2017), Viet Thanh Nguyen (2018), James Fallows (2019), Joan Baez (2020), Sanjay Gupta (2021), and Wesley Morris (2022).
Alternate media contact:
Alison Franklin, AFranklin@amacad.org