Vassar College, the highly selective liberal arts educational institution in Poughkeepsie, New York, has awarded tenure to seven faculty members. Vassar, one of the original Seven Sisters colleges, first admitted men in 1970. Today, women make up 62 percent of the student body.
“The recently tenured faculty embody Vassar’s commitment to rigorous research and creative practices, inspirational and socially relevant teaching, and dedicated service to the college and beyond campus,” noted Demetrius Eudell, dean of the faculty at the college.
Three of the seven faculty members awarded tenure are women.
Sole Anatrone is an associate professor of Italian. She joined the Vassar faculty in 2019. Her research focuses on questions of gender and sexuality, race, migration, (post)colonialism, and activism in cinema, literature, and cultural studies. She is the co-editor of Queering Italian Media (Lexington Books, 2020). Dr. Anatrone is a graduate of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she majored in English literature. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Italian studies from the University of California, Berkeley.
Denise Iris is an associate professor of film who joined the college’s faculty in 2018. Her film Booyaka, a portrait of Jamaican American singer Maxine Foster, won the Silver Spire at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Minor Visions, a journey through post-communist Romania, won the Critics’ Prize at the Dakino International Film Festival. Iris is a graduate of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. She holds a master of fine arts degree from Columbia University in New York City.
Sofia Ortiz-Hinojosa is an associate professor of philosophy. Dr. Ortiz-Hinojosa grew up in Monterrey, Mexico. She joined Vassar as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow before being hired as a full-time faculty member in 2018. She has developed research in contemporary philosophy of mind and the history of thought in the Americas, especially the colonial period in Latin America. Dr. Ortiz-Hinojosa is a graduate of Brown University, where she majored in philosophy and classics. She earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.