Two BU faculty elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Brookline—BU faculty members, Linda Heywood and John Thornton have been recently elected as members of the prestigious American Academy of Arts & Sciences, which recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions in scholarly and professional fields. Affiliated with both the CAS Department of History and the African American Studies Program, they are among the newly selected 276 artists, scholars, scientists and leaders in the public, nonprofit and private sectors.
Linda Heywood is a world-renowned historian of modern Africa and the history of the transatlantic slave trade. Heywood is the author of Contested Power in Angola (2000), editor of and contributor to Central Africans Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (2002), co-author with John Thornton of “Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas ( 2007), which won the Melville J. Herskovits Prize, and co-editor of African Americans in U. S. Foreign Policy: from the Era of Frederick Douglass to the Age of Obama (2015). She has contributed articles on African history and genealogy to the Huffington Post and The Root, and has consulted on several museum exhibitions and television programs. Her latest book, Njinga of Angola:Africa’s Warrior Queen (2017) has also been published in French and Portuguese.
John Thornton is a distinguished scholar of African history and has written numerous books on the Atlantic world and African history. Thornton is author of The Kingdom of Kongo: Civil War and Transition, 1641-1718 (1983); Africa and Africans in the Formation of the Atlantic world, 1400-1680 (1992); The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684-1706 (1998); Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500-1800 (1999); and in 2007 with Linda Heywood published Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas (2007), which won the Melville J. Herskovits Prize that year. His book, A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1350-1820 (2012) won the World History Association’s Prize for the Best New Book in World History in 2012. Thornton’s latest book, A History of West Central Africa to 1850 (2020) was recently published.
Academy President David Oxtoby said the newest members “have excelled in laboratories and lecture halls, they have amazed on concert stages and in surgical suites, and they have led in board rooms and courtrooms.”
“With today’s election announcement, these new members are united by a place in history and by an opportunity to shape the future through the academy’s work to advance the public good,” he said.
For a list of fellows, visit American Academy of Arts & Sciences.