Four Women Appointed to Department Chairs at Penn State

The College of Liberal Arts at Pennsylvania State University has announced the appointment of four women as department chairs.

Amy Allen was named professor and chair of the department of philosophy. She was the Parents’ Distinguished Research Professor in the Humanities and chair of the women’s and gender studies program at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Dr. Allen is a magna cum laude graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She is the author of The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory (Columbia University Press, 2008).

Kathryn Gines, an associate professor of philosophy, is the new interim chair of the department of African American studies. She came to Penn State in 2008 as an Africana Research Center Fellow and joined the faculty a year later. Dr. Gines is the founding co-editor of the journal Critical Philosophy of Race. She is also the founder of the Collegium of Black Women Philosophers. Dr. Gines holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Memphis.

Benedicte Monicat was named acting chair of French and Francophone studies for the fall 2015 semester. She is a professor of French and a professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. She previously served as chair from 2008 to 2014. Professor Monicat’s research focuses on women’s writings in nineteenth-century France. She is a graduate of the Sorbonne in Paris and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland.

Melissa W. Wright was appointed chair of the department of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. She is a professor of geography and women’s studies at the university. Professor Wright joined the faculty at Penn State in 2000 after teaching at the University of Georgia. Dr. Wright is a graduate of Harvard University. She holds a Ph.D. in geography and environmental engineering from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Dr. Wright is the author of Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism (Routledge, 2006).