TWO U.VA. FACULTY MEMBERS ELECTED TO 
THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

	CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., June 5 -- Rita Dove, Commonwealth
Professor of English, and Patricia Meyer Spacks, E.F. Shannon
Professor of English, have been honored by recent election to
membership in the American Philosophical Society.  They are among
the 31 new U.S. members and eight foreign members elected to what is
the country's oldest and one of its most prestigious learned
societies.
	Devoted to the advancement of scientific and scholarly
inquiry, the society was founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743.  Dove
and Spacks join a distinguished list of members that has included
the University of Virginia's founder, Thomas Jefferson, as well as
George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Paine, James Madison, John
Marshall, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, Louis
Pasteur and Robert Frost.
	Dove, a former U.S. Poet Laureate, joined the U.Va. faculty
in 1989.  Her many highly praised books include the poetry
collections "Mother Love" and "Thomas and Beulah," for which she was
awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
	Spacks, chair of the Department of English since 1991, is
one of her generation's leading literary scholars.  Combining the
best in feminist theory with probing historical research, her works
include "The Female Imagination," "The Poetry of Vision," "Imagining
a Self" and "Boredom:  The Literary History of a State of Mind."
She has held many positions in the Modern Language Association since
1976, including president in 1994. 
	The American Philosophical Society has had a long history in
recognizing the accomplishments of women.  In 1789, the Russian
Princess Dashkova, president of the Imperial Academy of Sciences of
St. Petersburg, was the first elected woman.  Others have included
Elizabeth Cady Agassiz, founder of Radcliffe College, Marie Curie,
discoverer of radium, and Gerty T. Cori, Nobel laureate
physiologist.  The society has 723 elected members.  Since 1901, 226
members have received the Nobel Prize. 

June 4, 1996

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	For interviews, contact Rita Dove at (804) 924-6618 or
Patricia Spacks at (804) 924-7071. Television reporters should
contact our TV News Office at (804) 924-7550.