Hayes, Woodward Named Members of AAAS

Professors Terrance A. Hayes and James F. Woodward have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The professors, both of whom teach within Pitt’s Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, are part of the academy’s 236th annual class, which will be inducted in the fall.

Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is one of the nation’s oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers. Its members are world scholars and leaders in the arts, business, and public affairs. 

Terrance A. Hayes is an internationally renowned poet and a professor in Pitt’s Department of English. His most recent poetry collection How to Be Drawn (Penguin, 2015) was a finalist for both the 2015 National Book Award and 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2010, he won the National Book Award for his collection Lighthead (Penguin), which also was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.

In 2014, Hayes was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship—also known as the “genius grant”—from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. A native of Columbia, S.C., he earned an MFA in writing at Pitt in 1997 and a BA at Coker College.

James F. Woodward is a Distinguished Professor in Pitt’s Department of History and Philosophy of Science. Much of his research focuses on theories of causation and scientific explanation as well as philosophical issues in neuroscience, psychology, and the social sciences. He is the author of Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation (Oxford University Press, 2003) and his work has appeared in such scholarly publications as the International Journal of Epidemiology and The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

Prior to joining Pitt in 2010, Woodward was the J.O. and Juliette Koepfli Professor of the Humanities at the California Institute of Technology. He served as the president of the Philosophy of Science Association from 2010 to 2012. Woodward earned a BA in mathematics at Carleton College in 1968 and a PhD at the University of Texas at Austin in 1977.