Dr. Millie S. Barranger resigned her positions as chair of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's department of dramatic literature and producing director of PlayMakers Repertory Company on June 30.

Barranger will remain on the UNC faculty as an Alumni Distinguished Professor and will take a leave during the 1999-2000 school year. She plans to edit a book on theatre history being translated into Korean and finish her biography on American Repertory Theatre founder Margaret Webster.

Among her achievements in 17 years of service, she recruited new faculty, resident theatre artists and administrators, and led a $2 million campaign to outfit the new Center for Dramatic Arts.

Barranger is credited with bringing professional theater to the campus of the UNC in Chapel Hill, including the world premiere of Horton Foote's The Death of Papa with Ellen Burstyn and Matthew Broderick; Judd Hirsch and Eva Marie Saint in Death of a Salesman; Pauline Flanagan in The Beauty Queen of Leenane; Kathleen Widdoes in Master Class; Frank Converse in Skylight; and Elizabeth Ashley and Keir Dullea in Two Character Play.

She is the author of numerous essays and articles about women in the theater and a theatre history text used in colleges. An interim department chair will be appointed by Aug. 1.

-- By Christine Ehren
and Kenneth Jones