Hamilton College Has Promoted Five Women Scholars and Granted Them Tenure

Hamilton College, the highly rated liberal arts educational institution in Clinton, New York, has announced promotions and the awarding of tenure to six faculty members. Five of the tenure awards were presented to women. The promotions are effective July 1.

Catherine Beck was promoted to associate professor of geosciences. She focuses her research on reconstructing Quaternary Period paleoenvironments from sedimentary and stratigraphic records. Dr. Beck joined the Hamilton College faculty in 2015. She is a graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Erica De Bruin was appointed an associate professor of government. She is the author of How to Prevent Coups d’Etat: Counterbalancing and Regime Survival (Cornell University Press, 2020). For the 2020-21 academic year, Dr. De Bruin is serving as a non-resident fellow at the Modern War Institute at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Dr. De Bruin holds a bachelor’s degree, two master’s degrees, and a Ph.D., all from Yale University.

Susan Jarosi was named an associate professor of art history at the college. Her research and teaching interests include art and social justice, trauma studies, performance art, economic histories of the arts, and interchanges between art and science. Dr. Jarosi previously taught at the University of Louisville. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia and holds a master’s degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Jarosi earned a Ph.D. at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Jaime Kucinskas was promoted to associate professor of sociology. Her research interests span the sociology of morality, religion, inequality, social movements, and cultural and organizational change. She is the author of the book The Mindful Elite: Mobilizing From the Inside Out (Oxford University Press, 2019). Dr. Kucinskas is a graduate of Colorado College. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Indiana University in Bloomington.

Alexandra Plakias was appointed an associate professor of philosophy. Before joining the faculty at Hamilton College, she spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Dr. Plakias is the author of Thinking Through Food: A Philosophical Introduction (Broadview Press, 2019), which focuses on philosophical issues surrounding food production and consumption. Dr. Plakias is a 2002 graduate of Hamilton College. She earned a master’s degree at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan.