Prolific scholar and activist remembered for academic influence and personal warmth
Marshall D. Sahlins, an eminent cultural anthropologist of the Pacific known for sparking lively academic debates, died April 5. He was 90.
Renowned for his prolific contributions to anthropology, Sahlins was the Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. For decades, he studied the history and ethnography of communities in Hawaii, Fiji and other islands in the South Pacific during the period of European contact engaging his research with indigenous political structures, modes of kinship and conceptions of nature.
For Sahlins, anthropology was both a privilege and an adventure, offering an opportunity to “reproduce within one’s mind the way the world is put together for other people,” he said during a 2014 appearance at the Chicago Humanities Festival.
Filed in Appointments, Faculty on January 1, 2021
Twenty-three University of Chicago faculty members have received named professorships or have been appointed distinguished service professors. Five of these appointments went to Black scholars.
Melissa L. Gilliam has been named the Ellen H. Block Distinguished Service Professor of Health Justice in the departments of obstetrics and gynecology and pediatrics. Her clinical focus is in pediatric and adolescent gynecology and family planning. She has served as vice provost at the university since 2016. Dr. Gilliam is a graduate of Yale University, where she majored in English. She earned a master’s degree at the University of Oxford in England and a medical degree at Harvard University. Dr. Gilliam also holds a master of public health degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago.