Mount Holyoke College, the selective liberal arts educational institution for women in South Hadley, Massachusetts, has announced the addition of nine women to its faculty.
Madeline Fanton is the Debra Martin Chase Assistant Professor of Film Media Theater. Her research is focused on the United States and its limited cultural memory of World War I. She examines how performances helped Americans remember, reinterpret, and sometimes forget the war. Dr. Fanton is a graduate of the University of California, Irvine, where she majored in drama. She holds a master’s degree in theater from California State University, Northridge and a Ph.D. in theater, dance, and performance studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Erin Griffin is an assistant professor of mathematics. She had been a postdoctoral lecturer at Northwestern University and earlier taught at Seattle Pacific University. Her research is focused on differential geometry, a field that uses tools from calculus to understand curved, higher-dimensional spaces. Dr. Griffin is a graduate of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Syracuse University in New York.
Pujita Guha is an assistant professor of film media studies. Her research hovers around environmental media, Indigenous studies, and ecologies of south and southeast Asia. Her current book project is titled Forested Media: Indigenous Lifeworlds in Upland Asia. Dr. Guha received a Ph.D. in film and media studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University.
Stacy Kim is the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy. Dr. Kim uses computer simulations of the tiniest galaxies in the universe — called “dwarf galaxies” — to investigate one of the universe’s largest unanswered questions: What is dark matter? Dr. Kim is a graduate of the California Institute of Technology, where she majored in physics. She holds a Ph.D. in astronomy from Ohio State University and was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Surrey in England.
Liora Mael is the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Chemistry. She studies the chemistry of museum environments, specifically how museums can protect their collections in an age of increased environmental threat while reducing the cost of that protection. Dr. Maelis is a graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio, where she majored in chemistry and studio arts. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Meg Graham MacLean is an assistant professor of data science. She studies how land-use and forest-policy decisions affect the climate. Her computer models follow carbon as forests grow, trees are harvested, wood becomes a product, and that product is ultimately discarded. Since 2019, Dr. MacLean taught quantitative ecology in environmental conservation at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Dr. MacLean is a graduate of Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, where she majored in civil and environmental engineering and physics. She holds a masters degree and a Ph.D. in natural resources from the University of New Hampshire.
Xuân Pham is an assistant professor of studio art. Dr. Pham was a postgraduate teaching fellow at Northeastern University in Boston. She is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores themes of hybridity, vulnerability, and empathy through object making and storytelling. Pham was born in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and immigrated to Omaha, Nebraska, as a child. She is a graduate of the University of Nebraska-Omaha and holds a master of fine arts degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Corrine Yap is a new assistant professor of mathematics. She was a visiting assistant professor in the School of Mathematics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on combinatorics, probability, and statistical physics. She studies how random processes evolve and how we can use them to model complex systems. Dr. Yap is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, where she majored in mathematics and theater. She holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from Rutgers University in New Jersey.
Pei Zhang is an assistant professor of geology and geography. A native of China, Dr. Zhang studies aeolian processes: how wind moves sediment and reshapes landscapes, focusing on coastal dunes and drylands. Dr. Zhang earned her bachelor’s degree in science education and pursued graduate study in physical geography at Beijing Normal University in China and the University of Alabama. She conducted postdoctoral research at New Mexico State University.