Myra Marx Ferree was appointed the Alice H. Cook Professor of Sociology in 2011. The recipient of this Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation endowed chair is allowed to name it to honor a scientific precursor, and Ferree chose to honor Cook (1903-1998) because of their shared sociological interest in Germany, feminism, unions, and comparative social policy. Ferree also will begin a three-year term as Director of the European Union Center of Excellence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in September 2011, stepping down after having already served for five years as the university’s Director of its Center for German and European Studies. She did much of the work on her book Varieties of Feminism: German Gender Politics in Global Perspective (Stanford) during her stay at the American Academy in Berlin, in spring 2005. As a long-time student of the women’s movements, Ferree’s previous books include Global Feminism: Women’s Organizing, Advocacy and Human Rights (New York University Press, 2006), Shaping Abortion Discourse: Democracy and the Public Sphere in Germany and the US (Cambridge, 2002) and Controversy and Coalition: The New Feminist Movement across Three Decades of Change (third edition, Routledge 2000).