Smith College, the highly rated liberal arts educational institution for women in Northampton, Massachusetts, has 14 new tenured or tenure-track faculty on campus this fall. Ten of the new faculty members are women.
Clarissa Chevalier is an assistant professor in the program for the study of women, gender & sexuality. Her research merges feminist science and technology studies with contemporary environmental science, examining how scientific imaging technologies, computational models, physical simulations, and sensing systems shape understandings of ocean life, ecological change, and climate futures. Dr. Chevalier is a graduate of Columbia College in Chicago. She holds a master’s degree from the Savannah College of Art and Design and a Ph.D. in art history, theory, and criticism from the University of California, San Diego.
Sara Kirshbaum is an assistant professor of government and statistical and data sciences. Her research interests center around American political behavior, especially as it relates to political participation, representation, and elections. Dr. Kirshbaum is a graduate of George Washington University. She received her Ph.D. in political science from Vanderbilt University in Nashville. She then completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship with the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Maytal Mark is a assistant professor of Jewish studies. Her current research focuses on how Jewish intellectuals in Egypt, Lebanon, and Iraq wrote about the “Jewish question” in their encounter with the Zionist movement in the first half of the twentieth century. Dr. Mark is a graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she majored in history. She earned a master’s degree in modern Middle East history from the University of Maryland, College Park and a Ph.D. in Hebrew/Judaic studies and history from New York University.
Genae Matthews who was born in Da Nang, Vietnam, and grew up in Ventura, California, is an assistant professor of philosophy. A graduate of Wellesley College in Massachusetts, Dr. Matthews earned a master’s degree and Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Matthews’ primary research is in epistemology and social and feminist philosophy. She teaches courses in ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, and moral psychology.
Sophia Monegro is an assistant professor of Africana studies. She is a literary scholar working at the crossroads of Black women’s intellectual history, Dominican studies, and digital humanities. She is the author of the forthcoming book, Architects of Relation: Black Women’s Social Thought from Santo Domingo to the Atlantic World. A graduate of the City College of New York, Dr. Monegro earned her doctorate in the department of African and African diaspora studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Equity at Washington University in St. Louis.
Jacqueline Pelham is an assistant professor of biological sciences. Her research focuses on understanding the molecular components of eukaryotic circadian timekeeping with the intersection of cell biology and physiology. Dr. Pelham earned a bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. in biochemistry and biophysics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. She then completed a faculty fellowship at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Yujie Pu is an assistant professor of history. She is a historian of late imperial and modern China whose research explores the intersections of medicine and law, particularly how medical knowledge shaped understandings of madness, evidence, and legal responsibility. Dr. Pu is completing work on a book entitled Legal Justice, Medical Authority, and Madness in China, 1600–1930. She received her Ph.D. in East Asian studies from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Juliana Restrepo Sanin is an assistant professor of government. Prior to joining the Smith College faculty, Dr. Sanin was an assistant professor of political science at the University of Florida. Her current book project, Gender, Violence, and Democracy in Latin America, analyzes violence and harassment against women politicians, its relationship with democratization efforts, and the creation and impact of different measures to address the problem. She received her Ph.D. from Rutgers University in New Jersey.
María Verónica San Martín is assistant professor of art. She is a multidisciplinary artist and educator who explores the impact of history, memory, and trauma through archives, artist books, installation, sculpture, and performance. San Martin is a graduate of Finis Terrae University in Santiago, Chile. She holds a master’s degree from The Corcoran School of Art and Design at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Kimberly Soriano is an assistant professor of Latin American and Latino/a studies. Her research focuses on Latinx communities and their experiences with gentrification, carcerality, bodily autonomy, care practices, and cultural production. Dr. Soriano is currently working on a book manuscript titled Feminist Fugitivities in Carceral Los Angeles. Dr. Soriano is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, where she double majored in Chicano/a studies and African American studies. She holds a Ph.D. in feminist studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara.