Four Women Named Department Chairs at the University of Kentucky

The University of Kentucky has announced the appointment of eight scholars to department chairs. Four of the new department chairs are women.

Associate professor Deborah L. Crooks was named chair of the department of anthropology. She holds a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She is currently conducting research funded by the National Science Foundation examining the relationship between livelihood strategies and food and nutrition security in Zambia.

Associate professor Marion Rust will be interim chair of the English department for the fall semester. Dr. Rust earned her Ph.D. at Stanford University. She specializes in early American literature and culture and nineteenth-century American women writers. She is the author of Prodigal Daughters: Susanna Rowson’s Early American Women (University of North Carolina Press, 2008).

Karen Petrone is the new chair of the history department. She is the author of The Great War in Russian Memory (Indiana University Press, 2011). She also writes extensively on historical issues relating to gender. Professor Petrone earned her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan.

Professor of Russian studies Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby is the new head of the department of modern and classical languages, literatures and cultures. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Virginia and has taught at the University of Kentucky ever since. She is the author of Village Values: Negotiating Identity, Gender, and Resistance in Urban Russian Life-Cycle Rituals (Slavica Publishers, 2008).