Highly rated Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, recently announced that it had named four faculty members to endowed chairs. Three of the appointments went to women.
Tina Hall was appointed the Christian A. Johnson Professor of Teaching Excellence. She joined the Hamilton faculty in 2001. Dr. Hall is a professor of literature and creative writing. She is the author of the novel The Snow Collectors (Dzanc Books), described by the publisher as the story of a woman who is “plunged into the mystery of a centuries-old letter regarding one of the most famous stories of Arctic exploration — the Franklin expedition, which disappeared into the ice in 1845.” Dr. Hall earned a master’s degree in fiction from Bowling Green State University in Ohio and a doctorate from the University of Missouri.
Lydia Hamessley was appointed to the Eugene R. Tobin Distinguished Professorship. She is a professor of music at the college and has been on the faculty since 1991. She is the author Unlikely Angel – The Songs of Dolly Parton (University of Illinois Press, 2020), which focuses on Parton’s songwriting with an emphasis on its connection to her Appalachian Mountain heritage. Dr. Hamessley is a graduate of Texas Lutheran College. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.
Quincy Newell was appointed to the Walcott-Bartlett Chair of Ethics and Christian Evidences. She studies American religious history, focusing on the construction of racial, gender, and religious identities in the 19th-century American West. She joined the Hamilton faculty in 2015. Dr. Newell is the author of Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon (Oxford University Press, 2019). She holds a master’s degree and doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.