Professor Colin Dayan has just been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  This is a rare distinction, recognizing those scholars, thinkers, researchers, and advocates of highest achievement in all fields of academic and public endeavor.  The Academy, as its charter declares, “to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honour, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.”  With books on law and literature such as The Law is a White Dog: How the Rituals of Law Make and Unmake Persons to works on Poe, Haiti, and  cruelty to animals, Dayan has fixed her eye on some of our most urgent and captivating issues.  Department chair Mark Schoenfield commented, “The real achievement is in the quality of Colin’s research, and this award shows that quality is recognized at the highest levels.  I am very proud that Vanderbilt and our department is able to provide scholars of such passion and achievement for our undergraduate and graduate classrooms.” She joins fellow Nashvillean former Governor Phil Bredesen, Mel Brooks,  and foreign honorary member Paul McCartney among this year’s inductees (for the complete list, see  http://www.amacad.org/news/classlist2012.pdf).