2020-21 new faculty
Hamilton welcomed seven new tenure-track faculty members in addition to visiting professors, lecturers, and teaching fellows. The College is in the midst of a 10-year period, begun in 2015, during which nearly half of its faculty will reach average retirement age. Among this year's newcomers are teaching scholars who study the ethics of digital technology, the reproduction of inequality, and South Asian art; a retired brigadier general; and a former U.S. ambassador. Read more about them below.
Nadya Bair
Assistant Professor of Art History, Spring Term
B.A., Barnard College; M.A., University of Southern California; Ph.D., University of Southern California
Areas of expertise: history of photography; 19th and 20th century visual culture; intersections of art with mass media and journalism; artist networks and collaboration; digital humanities
George Baker
Distinguished Lecturer in American Public Policy
J.D., Catholic University of America
Nikole Bonacorsi
Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology
Ph.D., Brown University
Areas of expertise: structure, function, and evolution of plants; Devonian paleobotany; plant reproductive morphology; heterospory
Charlotte Botha
Instructor in Music
D.M.A. candidate, University of North Texas; M.Mus., Nelson Mandela University
Areas of expertise: Choral repertoire and conducting; phonetic transcription of Afrikaans choral music; group vocal technique; choregie and interdisciplinary ensemble performance; text-painting in a cappella music; children’s choir composition; equity, diversity and inclusion in the choral literature canon
Amy Brener
Assistant Professor of Art
M.F.A., Hunter College
Areas of expertise: sculpture, drawing and digital media
Sookti Chaudhary
Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics
Ph.D., University of Kentucky
Areas of expertise: international trade, environmental economics, environmental justice,
health economics
Suraj Chaudhary
Lecturer in Philosophy
Ph.D., University of Kentucky
Areas of expertise: philosophy of technology, ethics of digital technology, philosophy of space
Mario Andrés Colón
Lecturer in Art
M.F.A., Laguna College of Art and Design
Areas of expertise: classical drawing, printmaking, classical sculpture, and digital sculpture illustration and graphic design
Christopher Coscia
Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Statistics
Ph.D., Dartmouth College
Areas of expertise: combinatorics, probability, graph theory, Markov chain Monte Carlo, political redistricting
Kelly Faig
Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology
Ph.D., University of Chicago
Areas of expertise: emotion, social stress, psychoneuroimmunology, psychophysiology, neurogenetics
Sarah Griffis
Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
Ph.D., Harvard University
Areas of expertise: history of early Christianity, New Testament, early Christian martyrdom, ancient Christianity in a Jewish and Greco-Roman context, archaeology, ancient reception of the classics, literary theory and genre studies, theory and method in the study of religion
Elaine Paravati Harrigan
Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology
Ph.D., University at Buffalo, State University of New York
Areas of expertise: social surrogacy, narrative effects, need to belong
Emmy Herland
Visiting Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies
Ph.D., University of Washington
Areas of expertise: Golden Age Spain, theater studies, Baroque literature and culture, and spectral studies
Yagmur Karakaya
Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology
Ph.D., University of Minnesota
Areas of expertise: sociological theory, political sociology, global sociology, comparative-historical sociology, cultural sociology, social movements, collective memory, nostalgia, populism, popular culture, qualitative methodology, emotions, Turkey
Michael Klosson
Sol M. Linowitz Visiting Professor of International Affairs, spring term
M.A., M.P.A, Princeton University
Areas of expertise: public affairs, U.S. foreign policy, Chinese-American relations
Gregory Koutnik
Visiting Assistant Professor of Government
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
Areas of expertise: environmental political theory, agrarianism, property and economic thought, populism
Heather Kropp
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies
Ph.D., Arizona State University
Areas of expertise: environmental data science, ecohydrology, ecology, geospatial analysis
Mattie Mackenzie-Liu
Lecturer in Government
M.P.A., O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University
Areas of expertise: American social welfare policy, public program evaluation, state and local public finance
Jaime Mancilla
Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology
Ph.D., University of Chicago
Areas of expertise: electrophysiological recordings for the analysis of sensory processing, inhibitory interneurons, general physiology, neurophysiology, neuroanatomy and sensory systems.
Charles (Alex) Manning
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Ph.D., University of Minnesota
Areas of expertise: race and racism, sports, families, youth, reproduction of inequality
Arathi Menon
Assistant Professor of Art History
Ph.D., Columbia University
Areas of expertise: South Asian art; visual culture of Indian Ocean trade; churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples in Kerala; syncretism; religious iconography; artistic agency; digital art history
Anna Huff Mercovich
Assistant Professor of Digital Arts
M.F.A., California Institute of the Arts
Areas of expertise: hybrid and multimedia performance; sound; technology and interactivity; collaborative media and performance strategies
Olanrewaju Morenikeji
Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology
Ph.D., Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria
Areas of expertise: genomics, functional genomics, epigenetics, Immunology, bioinformatics, disease/complex trait expression, transcriptional control, population genomics, genome stability, genome evolution, and comparative genomics
Sally Packard
Visiting Lecturer in Art
Patricia Sanchez
Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology
Ph.D., Graduate Center, City University of New York
Areas of expertise: psychology and law; media influences on attitudes; interrogations and false confessions; plea bargaining
Steve Schillinger
Visiting Assistant Professor of Literature and Creative Writing
Ph.D., University of Washington
Areas of expertise: Renaissance, drama, book history and history of early print and rhetoric
Ty Seidule
Chamberlain Fellow and Visiting Professor of History
Ph.D., Ohio State University
Areas of expertise: military history, Civil War memory, African American military history
Yonatan Shemesh
Visiting Instructor of Religious Studies
M.A., University of Chicago Divinity School; M.S., Fordham University Graduate School of Education
Taveeshi Singh
Visiting Instructor of Women’s and Gender Studies
M.A., Teachers College Columbia University
James Taylor
Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics
Ph.D., Harvard University
Areas of expertise: Latin bucolic and epic poetry; classical historiography and geography; natural philosophy in classical antiquity; history of science and geology; environmental criticism and history
Frank Vlossak
Distinguished Lecturer in American Public Policy
J.D., George Mason University
Rebecca Wall
Visiting Assistant Professor of History
Ph.D., Stanford University
Areas of expertise: environmental history, African history, digital humanities, history and anthropology of development, history of technology, French colonialism