Endowed Professorships

The following elections to endowed positions were made by the Cornell Board of Trustees at its May meeting.

Cheyfitz

Eric Cheyfitz, professor of English with indefinite tenure in the College of Arts and Sciences, was elected the Ernest I. White Professor in American Studies and Humane Letters, effective July 1, 2004. Cheyfitz also serves on the faculty of the American Indian Program, the American Studies Program and teaches federal Indian law in the Law School.

The chair is named for Ernest I. White, Cornell Class of 1893, who left a bequest to the university in 1959 for the professorship. White was publisher and president of the Post-Standard of Syracuse, a nephew of Cornell's first president, Andrew Dickson White, and husband to the granddaughter of Cornell trustee Henry Sage. The professorship is intended to ensure that Cornellians are taught respect for and maintenance of American traditions, appreciation of the U.S. Constitution, and thrift and the American system of free enterprise.

Cheyfitz, who has been a member of the Cornell faculty since 2003, focuses his work on American literatures and U.S. federal Indian law within the context of colonial, postcolonial and comparative ethnic studies. His scholarship also explores historic conflicts between capitalism and democracy within U.S. domestic and foreign policy. Prior to his Cornell position, he was the Clara M. Clendenen Term Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.

Cheyfitz has published numerous articles in the field of American studies, as well as the books: The Trans-Parent: Sexual Politics in the Language of Emerson (1981) and The Poetics of Imperialism: Translation and Colonization from The Tempest to Tarzan (1991), which was chosen by Choice as one of the outstanding scholarly books of that year. He is the editor of the Columbia History of Native American Literatures of the United States, 1945-2000, which will be published by Columbia University Press in the fall of 2005.

Cheyfitz received his M.A. in creative writing in 1974, and an M.A. in 1977 and Ph.D. in 1979, both in comparative literature, all from Johns Hopkins University.

Cochran

Sherman Cochran, professor of history with indefinite tenure in the College of Arts and Sciences, was elected the Hu Shih Professor of Chinese History, effective July 1, 2004.

The Hu Shih Professorship was established in 1994 and is the first one ever established by an international Cornell Club and also the first endowed chair to honor Cornell alumnus Hu Shih. Hu Shih '14 developed a vernacular style of writing the Chinese language, rather than the classical form. He went on to become a leader in Chinese academic life, ambassador to the United States during World War II and later China's representative to the United Nations. Hu Shih's son, Hu Twu-Wang '42, and grandson, Victor Hu '78, also graduated from Cornel.

In 2000 Cochran published Encountering Chinese Networks: Western, Japanese, and Chinese Corporations in China, 1880-1937, and he currently has in press a book on marketing medicine and making mass culture in China, 1880-1956. He is the author of Big Business in China: Sino-Foreign Rivalry in the Cigarette Industry, 1890-1937, which was selected by the Thomas Newcomen Society as one of the five best books published in business history during the three-year period 1979-81. He is also the co-author of One Day in China: May 21, 1936, which was cited by The New York Times Book Review as one of the 200 "Notable Books" published in 1983.

Cochran, who joined the Cornell faculty in 1973 as an assistant professor and was promoted to full professor in 1986, received his B.A. in 1962, M.A. in 1967 and Ph.D. in 1975, all in history and all from Yale University. He has been an honorary research professor at the Institute of Economics, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, since 1994, and he also served as the director of Cornell's East Asia Program from 1985 to 1987.