Bowdoin College, the highly selective liberal arts educational institution in Brunswick, Maine, has announced the appointment of eight faculty members to endowed professorships. Jennifer Scanlon, dean for academic affairs at the college, stated: “Endowed chair appointments both honor the exceptional achievements of our faculty and underscore the importance of scholarly and creative work at the college, while reflecting the generosity of our donors. We are proud to recognize these eight faculty members, whose contributions across disciplines enrich the intellectual life of the college.”
Among the eight new holders of endowed chairs, four are women.
Elena Cueto Asín has been named the Charles Weston Pickard Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures. As a specialist in modern Spanish literature, theater, and film, she examines Spain’s cultural production in national and global contexts, as well as the relationships between literary texts and other media. Professor Cueto Asín joined the Bowdoin faculty in 2000. She is a graduate of Universidad Complutense de Madrid in Spain and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Purdue University in Indiana.
Laura Henry has been named the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Constitutional and International Law and Government. Her research focuses on environmental and climate politics, social movements, and state-society relations in post-Soviet Russia. Dr. Henry is the author of Red to Green: Environmental Activism in Post-Soviet Russia (Cornell University Press, 2010) and co-editor of Bringing Global Governance Home: NGO Mediation in BRICS States (Oxford University Press, 2021). Professor Henry is a graduate of Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she majored in history. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Emily M. Peterman has been named the Norma L. and Roland G. Ware Jr. Professor of Earth and Oceanographic Science. Professor Peterman’s research spans geology, material science, and biology, combining petrology, mineral chemistry, crystal orientation, and geochronology to study the evolution of Earth’s crust and how organisms build skeletal structures. Dr. Peterman joined the Bowdoin faculty in 2012 and was promoted to full professor this year. She is a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont, where she majored in geology and Spanish. Professor Peterman earned a Ph.D. in geological sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Guo Jue has been named the Marvin H. Green Jr. Assistant Professor of History and Asian Studies. A social and cultural historian of early China, Dr. Jue studies the history of Indigenous complex societies in the Middle Yangzi River Valley from roughly the fourth millennium BCE to the third century CE. She is completing her first book, Becoming the South: Early Water Societies in the Middle Yangzi River Valley. Dr. Jue is a graduate of Beijing University in China. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.