Smith College Announces the Promotion of Four Women to Full Professor

Smith College, the highly rated liberal arts educational institution for women in Northampton, Massachusetts, has announced the promotion of six faculty members to the rank of full professor. Four of the promotions went to women.

Ibtissam Bouachrine is chair of the department of Spanish and Portuguese at Smith College. She has also served as director of the Middle East Studies Program and as co-director of the Women’s Education Concentration. Her research is centered on women and gender issues in Islam. Professor Bouachrine is the author of Women and Islam: Myths, Apologies, and the Limits of Feminist Critique (Lexington Books, 2014). Dr. Bouachrine holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from West Virginia University. She earned a Ph.D. from Tulane University in New Orleans.

Darcy Buerkle is the chair of the department of history. From 2014 to January 2016, Dr. Burke served as director of the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center, which is housed at Mount Holyoke College. Her research focuses on modern European women’s and gender history with an emphasis on German and German Jewish women’s intellectual and cultural history. Professor Buerkle is the author of Nothing Happened: Charlotte Salomon and an Archive of Suicide (University of Michigan Press, 2013).

Lucy Mule was promoted to full professor of education and child study at Smith College. She has served as the inaugural faculty director of what is now the Jandon Center for Community Engagement at the college. Professor Mule teaches courses in the sociological and cultural foundations of education. Dr. Mule holds a bachelor’s degree in education from Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya, and a Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University.

Maria Helena Rueda was named a full professor of Spanish and Portuguese. She teaches courses on Latin American literature and culture since the late 19th century, and on Latin American film. She is working on a book project that studies films dealing with the legacies of repressive regimes and civil wars in present-day Latin America, particularly in Chile, Colombia and Perú. Dr. Rueda is a graduate of the Universidad de los Andes, in Bogota, Colombia. She earned a master’s degree at Stony Brook University in New York and a Ph.D. at Stanford University.