Suzanne Keen, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty, announced the appointment of new faculty for the 2018-19 academic year, including six tenure-track appointments.
New tenure track faculty include:
Justin Clark, Philosophy; Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara. His research concentrates on ancient theories of virtue, as well as various problems in moral psychology. His dissertation focused primarily on the theory of virtue in early Plato, and the moral psychology of Plato’s “dialogues of definition.” Clark is a proponent of virtue ethics as a viable alternative to deontological and consequentialist theories. In addition to classes related to his research, he enjoys teaching environmental ethics, social and political philosophy, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion.
Mackenzie Cooley, History; Ph.D., Stanford University. After specializing in early modern history and history of science at Stanford, Cooley joined the Cornell University Society of Fellows as a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow. One strand of her work considers the history of ideas in Renaissance Italy and the Spanish Empire, especially the role that practice and experience played in informing theories about nature. Cooley’s research also focuses on history with science, particularly the ways in which genetics and bioarchaeological evidence can provide new datasets for historians to transcend archival sources. Her current book project, Artifice Embodied, traces ideas of breeding, inheritance, and race to analyze how projects for bringing the Old World to the New intersected with utopian trends in Renaissance thought.
Rhea Datta, Biology; Ph.D., Indiana University, Bloomington. After receiving a Ph.D. in molecular cellular and development biology, Datta was a Postdoctoral Fellow at New York University, where she studied how proteins distinguish between specific DNA-binding sequences to regulate gene expression in the embryo. At Hamilton, she will continue her work on gene regulation to address biological processes during eye and embryo development, ranging from neurodevelopment to tissue patterning. Datta is committed to increasing representation within STEM communities. She strives to foster an inclusive learning environment, and looks forward to developing innovative ways to teach and mentor young scientists at Hamilton.
Susan Jarosi, Art History; Ph.D., Duke University. Before coming to Hamilton, Jarosi held joint appointments as associate professor of art history and visual studies in the Women’s & Gender Studies Department and Fine Arts Department at the University of Louisville. She specializes in art and visual culture since 1950. Jarosi’s research and teaching interests include art and social justice, trauma studies, performance art, economic histories of the arts, and interchanges between art and science. She is a member of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Committee on College and University Governance and past president of the AAUP chapter at the University of Louisville.
Darren Strash, Computer Science; Ph.D., University of California, Irvine. For the past two years, Strash was a visiting assistant professor at Colgate University; before that, he spent two years in Germany as a postdoctoral researcher at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology’s Institute of Theoretical Informatics, and worked for three years as a software engineer at Intel. His research interests center on graph algorithms for large social networks and web-crawl graphs, and his additional areas of expertise include computational geometry, graph drawing, subgraph counting and listing, dynamic data structures, combinatorial optimization, and heuristic algorithms.
Aaron Strong, Environmental Studies; Ph.D., Stanford University. Strong’s environmental focus is on climate change. For the past two years, Strong was an assistant professor in the School of Marine Sciences and the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine. Trained as an interdisciplinary sustainability scientist, Strong focuses his research on understanding the impacts of climate change and the dynamics of climate feedbacks in both terrestrial and marine systems, including work on ocean acidification, carbon sequestration, and sea-level rise. Concerned with both the biophysical and human dimensions of climate change, his work also employs participatory scenario-based, spatially-explicit assessments that seek to enhance climate justice and provide actionable information to decision-makers.
Jesse Weiner, formerly visiting assistant professor of classics, was also appointed to the tenure track.
Other new faculty are: Lacey Carpenter, Anthropology; Amy Buchholz, Maximiliano Ferro, Rita Lombardi, Art; James Bloom, Art History; Wesley Kramer, Joe Stanco, Chemistry; Tiffany Wang, Chinese; Amy Koenig, Classics; Roseann Pluretti, Communication; Chris Kern, Sharon Wang, East Asian Languages and Literatures; Tyler Saxon, Jonah Yuen, Economics; William Schmitt, French; Kendra Murray, Geosciences; Chris Burwick, Todd Carmody, Franziska Schweiger, German & Russian; Marcelo Carosi, Ines Corujo Martin, Hispanic Studies; Clare Mullaney, Literature & Creative Writing; Branden Stone, Stephen Schillinger, Mathematics; Danan Tsan, Music; Manuel Barrantes, Reza Hadisi, Philosophy; Philip Friedrich, Religious Studies; Jinwon Kim, Sociology; Susan Finque, Theatre; and Dylan Blackston, Women’s and Gender Studies.
