by Jon Lackman | 30 September 2008 | Uncategorized
From the Yale Daily News:
If being deemed a “great teacher” is any indication of a faculty member’s worthiness to assume the job of dean of Yale College, University President Richard Levin’s likely short list can quickly be reduced to one candidate: Mary Miller … But the 55-year old Sterling Professor — the highest academic rank at Yale — may have a different life path in mind, one that does not lead to the spacious corner office on Prospect Street. Miller announced three weeks ago that she plans to step down from her post at Saybrook next year to become the A.W. Mellon Lecturer at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. … “[Miller] is part of a new wave with Maya scholarship,” Sterling Professor emeritus of the history of art Vincent Scully said of Miller’s academic specialty, Mesoamerican art with a focus on Mayan culture. “She changed everyone’s attitude. Pre-Columbianists wanted to think of Mayans as philosopher kings, and her book [“The Blood of Kings”] reveals that they were more bloody than the Aztecs” … In addition to her six-week appointment at the National Gallery, Miller has also been selected as Cambridge University’s Slade Professor of Fine Art, the senior post at Cambridge in art history, for the academic year 2014-2015 … After graduating summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1975, Miller earned her M.A. and Ph.D. at Yale and immediately began her ascent up the University’s academic ladder as a lecturer in the History of Art Department in 1980.
