Three Women Promoted and Granted Tenure at Williams College

Williams College, the highly rated liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts, has announced the awarding of tenure to six members of its faculty. The six faculty members are also being promoted to associate professor Three of the faculty members promoted and awarded tenure are women. The promotions take effect on July 1.

Jessica Chapman was promoted to associate professor of history. She specializes in American foreign relations and international history. She is the author of Cauldron of Resistance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and 1950s Southern Vietnam (Cornell University Press, 2013).

Dr. Chapman is a graduate of Valparaiso University in Indiana. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Rhon Manigault-Bryant was named associate professor of Africana studies and granted tenure. She teaches courses on Blacks in film and African American women. She is the author of the forthcoming book, Talking to the Dead: Religion, Music, and Lived Memory Among Gullah/Geechee Women (Duke University Press, 2014).

Dr. Manigault-Bryant is a graduate of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. She holds a master of divinity degree and a Ph.D. from Emory University in Atlanta.

Mara Naaman will be an associate professor of comparative literature and Arabic. Her research focuses on modern Egyptian literature, Arab women’s writing, and Arab-American literature and culture. She is the author of Urban Space in Contemporary Egyptian Literature: Portraits of Cairo (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

Dr. Naaman is a graduate of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. Arabic literature at Columbia University.