Humanities professors David Bell (History) and Yiyun Li (Lewis Center for the Arts) are among seven University faculty members elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. They join this year’s cohort of 261 leaders in academia, the arts, business, government and public affairs.
Bell is the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor in the Era of North Atlantic Revolutions, professor of history, and director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies. He is a historian of early modern France, with a particular interest in the political culture of the Old Regime and the French Revolution.
Li is a professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts. She is the author of eight books, including two story collections, “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers” and “Gold Boy, Emerald Girl”; four novels, “The Vagrants,” “Kinder Than Solitude,” “Where Reasons End,” and “Must I Go”; and two nonfiction books, “Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life” and “Tolstoy Together, 85 Days of War and Peace with Yiyun Li.”
