HARTFORD, CT, June 21, 2012 – Trinity’s faculty will feature a noticeably different lineup in the 2012-13 academic year, with the addition of nine new members, the promotion of five members to the rank of full professor and the awarding of tenure to two. The appointments and promotions will take effect on July 1, and were announced by Rena Fraden, dean of the faculty and vice president for academic affairs.
Among the new hires is Tennyson O’Donnell, who has been named the Allan K. Smith Lecturer in English Composition and the director of the Allan K. Smith Center for Writing and Rhetoric. O’Donnell comes to Trinity from Mississippi State University, where he is an assistant professor and where he established and built the writing center, of which he served as director. During his tenure, the MSU writing center experienced rapid growth – from an average of 350 visits a term to more than 3,000. He is credited with developing the center into “a visible, integral part of the University’s desire to improve writing across all disciplines and all levels.”
O’Donnell received his B.A. in English from Brigham Young University-Hawaii, his M.A. in English from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, and his Ph.D. in composition and rhetoric from Syracuse University, with specialties in composition pedagogy, writing program administration, and rhetorical theory.
The new tenure-track hires, who will be introduced at the first faculty meeting in September, include:
- Cheyenne S. Brindle, assistant professor of chemistry
B.A., chemistry, Reed College
Ph.D., organic chemistry, Stanford University
Dissertation: The Direct Catalytic Asymmetric Aldol Reaction and its Application to the Syntheses of Bryostatins and Leustroducsin B
Postdoctoral Fellow, American Cancer Society, Harvard University
- Kevin A. González, assistant professor of English
B.A., English and international affairs, Carnegie Mellon University
M.F.A., creative writing: poetry, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Thesis: Cultural Studies
M.F.A., creative writing: fiction, Iowa Writers’ Workshop
Thesis: Statehood
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Herzing University
Visiting Faculty, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Reo Matsuzaki, assistant professor of political science (effective January 1, 2013)
B.S., Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Ph.D., political science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dissertation: Institutions by Imposition: Colonial Lessons for Contemporary State-building
Postdoctoral Fellow, Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rules of Law, Stanford University
- Meredith E. Safran, assistant professor of classics
B.A., anthropology/ancient studies, Columbia University
M.A., classics, Princeton University
Ph.D., classics, Princeton University
Dissertation: Civis Romana: Women and Civic Identity in Livy, Ab urbe condita I
Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics, Drew University
- Lisa R. Schulkind, assistant professor of economics
B.A., economics, Union College
M.A., economics, University of California, Davis
Ph.D., pending 2012, economics, University of California, Davis
Dissertation: Fertility and Infant Health
- Kari L. Theurer, assistant professor of philosophy
B.S., biology, University of Cincinnati
B.A., philosophy, University of Cincinnati
M.A., philosophy, Indiana University
Ph.D., pending 2012, philosophy, Indiana University
Dissertation: Rethinking Reductionism: From 17th Century Mechanism to Contemporary Molecular Neuroscience
- Thomas M. Wickman, assistant professor of history and American studies
A.B., history and literature, Harvard College
A. M., history, Harvard University
Ph.D., pending 2012, History of American Civilization, Harvard University
Dissertation: Snowshoe Country: The Indian Northeast in the Little Ice Age, 1620-1727
- Abigail Fisher Williamson, assistant professor of political science and public policy and law
B.A., political science and Russian, Williams College
M.P.P., public policy, Harvard Kennedy School
Ph.D., public policy, Harvard University
Dissertation: Beyond the Passage of Time: Local Government Response in New Immigrant Destinations
Preceptor, Harvard College Writing Program
In addition, the following faculty members have been promoted to the rank of professor: Kent Dunlap, Robert Fleming, Kathleen Kete, Kevin McMahon, and Theresa Morris.
A member of the Biology Department, Dunlap’s areas of expertise are neuroscience; animal physiology and evolution; the biology of sensation and communication; science and religion; and movement and sensation. Having been at Trinity since 1998, Dunlap received his B.A. from Macalaster College in Saint Paul, MN, and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington.
Fleming is also a member of the Biology Department. He earned his B.A. from the College of the Holy Cross and his Ph.D. from Brandeis University, both in Massachusetts. At Brandeis, Fleming studied the development of flight muscles in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. From 1987 to 1991, he engaged in post-doctoral research at Yale University, studying cell-to-cell communication in fruit fly development. He taught at the University of Rochester in New York before arriving at Trinity in 2001.
Kete will be the Borden W. Painter, Jr., ’58 Professor of European History. A Trinity faculty member since 1990, Kete has an A.B., an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. She specializes in European history, especially the history of France. Her first book, The Beast in the Boudoir: Petkeeping in Nineteenth Century Paris, helped create the thriving interdisciplinary field of the cultural history of animals. Her current project, Plotlines: Ambition and Culture in Modernizing France, identifies the problem of ambition as highly significant in the intellectual and political climate of post-Revolutionary France.
Kevin McMahon, who will be the John R. Reitemeyer and Charles A. Dana Research Professor of Political Science, has been at Trinity since 2005. He received his B.A. from the State University of New York at Potsdam and his Ph.D. from Brandeis University. His research has focused on the presidency; the political and historical consequences of Supreme Court decisions; constitutional law; school desegregation; political parties; and elections. He is the author of Reconsidering Roosevelt on Race: How the Presidency Paved the Road to Brown, which won the American Political Science Association’s Richard E. Neustadt Award for the best book published on the American presidency in 2004, and of Nixon’s Court: His Challenge to Judicial Liberalism and Its Political Consequences, published in 2011.
Theresa Morris will be a professor of sociology, having been at Trinity since 2000. She holds a B.A. from Southwestern Oklahoma State University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Texas A&M University. Her areas of expertise include organizational theory; sociology of reproduction and birth; political sociology; and sex and gender. She is writing a book examining the rate of caesarian section births in the United States using qualitative data.
Zayde Antrim and Scott Gac have been granted tenure and promoted to the rank of associate professor.
Antrim, who has been at Trinity since 2006, earned her B.A. from the University of Virginia, her M.Phil. from the University of Oxford and her Ph.D. from Harvard University. Her areas of expertise include the cultural and intellectual history of the Middle East; geography, mapping and cities; gender and sexuality; Arabic literature; and slavery in the Islamic world. She was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship in 1995.
Gac will be an associate professor in history and American studies. He has a B.A. from Columbia University, an M.M. from the Juilliard School, and an M.Phil. and Ph.D. from the City University of New York Graduate Center. A member of the faculty since 2006, Gac’s research interests include American social reform and social protest; Civil War representation and memory; American foodways; and American music. Gac is the author of Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Culture of Antebellum Reform.
The photo on the home page is of Tennyson O'Donnell, the newly appointed Allan K. Smith Lecturer in English and the director of the Allan K. Smith Center for Writing and Rhetoric.