Humanities professor named to the American Philosophical Society

Fedwa Malti-Douglas, professor of humanities at IU, recently joined the likes of Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Robert Frost as a member of the American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the country. Malti-Douglas, a native of Lebanon, became the fourth IU faculty member to receive the honor and is also a professor of gender studies and comparative literature as well as an adjunct professor of law. \nThe APS, founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin, recognizes extraordinary achievement in the sciences and humanities. Malti-Douglas is one of 10 new members in the humanities class. Other recent inductees include Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Washington Post chairman Donald Graham, award-winning author and historian David McCullough and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Noam Chomsky. There are 912 current members of the society from two dozen countries around the globe. More than 200 members of the society have been awarded the Nobel Prize.\n"As an immigrant and a naturalized citizen, I feel privileged to be a part of America's most exclusive and oldest learned society," Malti-Douglas said in a press release. "I have always tried to push back the boundaries of the fields in which I worked, in both my teaching and my research. Hence, I find it validating personally for me that after receiving the highest honors in the Arab world, I should now be similarly recognized in the United States."\nMalti-Douglas's intellectual focus on visual and verbal narratives covers an extensive range of topics from medieval history to privacy and disability law.\n"Fedwa is one of the most accomplished and productive scholars I know and a true interdisciplinarian," said Professor Helen Gremillion, director of undergraduate studies for the Department of Gender Studies. "She helps all of us in the Department of Gender Studies with our goal of pushing the boundaries of disciplinary knowledge." \nMalti-Douglas is the author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated "The Starr Report Disrobed," published by Columbia University Press in 2000, and "Men, Women and God(s)," which was chosen as a Centennial Book by the University of California Press in 1995. She has also had editorials published in the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune and is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including a $100,000 award from the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences.\nThe APS promotes useful knowledge in the sciences and humanities through excellence in scholarly research, professional meetings, publications, library resources and community outreach. \n"It's not a working society, but more like a meeting of minds," fellow APS member Lawrence Einhorn said. "Attending the meetings is like getting a ticket to listen to the greatest thinkers of the 21st century."\nEinhorn was the third IU faculty member to be inducted to the society in 2001. He is a distinguished professor at the IU School of Medicine in Indianapolis and is known for his breakthrough research in the field of oncology. He too said he felt very privileged by the distinction.\n"It's an extraordinary honor to be voted into this society," he said. "You have to be able to demonstrate that you've done something exceptional and different in your field." \nMembers are encouraged to attend the society's bi-annual meetings where they discuss various topics in history, science and the arts. Malti-Douglas looks forward to taking part in the discussion.\n"The great debates of our age -- about artificial intelligence, about the manipulation of the genome, about new definitions of gender, of marriage and religion, even of liberty and security, and the clash of cultures -- all these debates involve central questions in the humanities," she said.\n-- Contact staff writer Derek Smith at deresmit@indiana.edu.