9 faculty promoted, 7 earn tenure

At its most recent meeting, the Connecticut College Board of Trustees approved two faculty promotions to full professor and seven promotions to associate professor with tenure effective July 1. The promoted faculty represent a wide range of disciplines and have demonstrated distinction in teaching, research and service to the College.  

James Downs was promoted to professor of history and Heidi Henderson was promoted to professor of dance. Promoted to associate professor with tenure were Nadav Assor (Art), Waed Athamneh (Classics/Arabic Studies), Chris Barnard (Art), David Chavanne (Economics), Denis Ferhatović (English), Priya Kohli (Mathematics and Statistics), and Mónika López-Anuarbe (Economics).

 

Professor of History James Downs

Downs, a professor at the College since 2006, is a historian of the United States. He is the author of Stand By Me: The Forgotten History of Gay Liberation and Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction. He has also published Beyond Freedom: Disrupting the History of Emancipation, which he co-edited with David Blight; and Connexions: Histories of Race and Sex in North America, which he co-edited with Jennifer Brier and Jennifer L Morgan. His current book project, The Laboring Dead: From Subjugation to Science in Global History, which is under contract with Harvard University Press, investigates how colonialism, slavery and the American Civil War contributed to the development of epidemiology. Downs was recently an Andrew W. Mellon New Directions Fellow at Harvard University, where he gained training in medical anthropology. While at Harvard, he was also a fellow at The Weatherhead Initiative on Global History. Downs also regularly publishes opinion pieces and articles in The New York Times, Washington Post, Time Magazine, Chronicle of Higher Education, Huffington Post, New Republic, Slate, Salon, and Vice.

Professor of Dance Heidi Henderson

Henderson, who joined the College in 2003, specializes in modern technique, choreography, improvisation, anatomy and dance writing. She is a four-time recipient of the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Choreography Fellowship for excellence in the field and her work has been performed in London, Korea and New York City, as well as at Jacob’s Pillow in Massachusetts; The Flynn Space in Burlington, Vermont; The Bates Dance Festival in Lewiston, Maine; and at many other places in New England. Henderson is the artistic director of elephant JANE dance. She has also danced in the companies of Bebe Miller, Nina Weiner and Paula Josa-Jones, and with Colleen Thomas, Peter Schmitz and Sondra Loring. She is a contributing editor at "Contact Quarterly: a vehicle for moving ideas," and is the author "Growing Place," which contains interviews with artists of the Bates Dance Festival, where she teaches regularly. 

Associate Professor of Art Nadav Assor

Assor, who joined the College in 2012, lead the development of the new expanded media area in the Studio Art Department. Since 2000, Assor has worked as a freelance new media producer, creating websites, games and interactive prototypes for clients including health service providers, colleges, artists and start-up companies. He has exhibited his work and performed in venues in Israel, China, Germany and the United States. Assor's classes, all cross-listed between studio art and the Ammerman Center for Art and Technology, include “Introduction to Digital Concepts in Time Based Media,” “Video Installation,” “Sound Art” and “Experimental 3D.” 

Associate Professor of Arabic Studies in the Department of Classics Waed Athamneh

Athamneh, a professor at the College since 2011, is a specialist in Arabic literature who focuses on modern Arabic poetry and 20th century Arab politics. She is the author of Modern Arabic Poetry: Revolution and Conflict, which addresses the impact of past and contemporary Middle Eastern politics on its poetry. Athamneh has been awarded several Connecticut College research awards and grants to conduct work and support her international research. In 2006-2007, she was a Fulbright Scholar teaching Arabic and conducting research at William Paterson University, New Jersey. Athamneh supervises students’ research projects and teaches a variety of courses such as “Introductory Arabic,” “Intermediate Arabic,” “Modern Arabic Literature,” “Arab Women Writers,” “Contemporary Arab Journalism,” and independent courses in Arabic Studies.

Associate Professor of Art Chris Barnard 

Barnard, a professor at the College since 2012, specializes in painting, drawing, art history, two-dimensional art, art history, U.S. militarization and imperialism, and critical discourse in contemporary art. His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York City, San Diego, Chicago, and New Haven, and can be found in public and private collections nationally and internationally. Barnard’s current work is focused on white supremacy’s relationship to the privileged spaces of his experiences, such as private art and educational institutions. At the College, he teaches “Concepts in Two Dimensions,” “Drawing Fundamentals,” “Introduction to Painting,” “Figurative Painting and Its Politics” and “Large Format Painting.”

Associate Professor of Economics David Chavanne

Chavanne, who joined the College in 2012, specializes in experimental economics, behavioral economics, economics and philosophy, and public choice. He is interested in how economics can be integrated with other social sciences, philosophy and law—and how economic ideas can be communicated to people unfamiliar with, and resistant to, an economic way of thinking. Chavanne teaches courses in behavioral finance, experimental economics and economics and morality, and he has published articles in numerous journals, including Drug and Alcohol Dependence, Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, Review of Behavioral Economics and Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.

Associate Professor of English Denis Ferhatovi

Ferhatovi, who joined the College in 2012, specializes in medieval literature (especially Old and Middle English poetry), word and image, postcolonial theory, and translation. He has published numerous scholarly articles and book reviews, and has given talks in Bosnia-Herzegovina, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Macedonia, Montenegro, Turkey, the United States and the US Virgin Islands. He teaches “Theory/ Practice of Literary Study,” “Runes, Riddles and Dragons: Adventures in Old English,” “Arthurian Legend,” “Love and Sex in the Middle Ages,” “The Canterbury Tales,” “Nomads, Shamans and Mystics: Imaging in Central Asia,” “Visual and Literary Worlds of Medieval England,” and “Essentials of Literary Study.”

 

Associate Professor of Statistics Priya Kohli

Kohli, a professor at the College since 2012, specializes in the areas of covariance modeling, longitudinal/panel studies, multivariate modeling, missing data, time series, spatial statistics and spatio-temporal modeling. She also works in interdisciplinary research areas including RNA-seq analysis, healthcare devices, environmental sciences, and business and finance. Kohli’s research has been published in some of the most distinguished international statistics and interdisciplinary journals, as well as in “Economic Time Series: Modeling and Seasonality,” and she has been invited to present her work at several prestigious international conferences. She is currently working on RNA-sequencing methodology for studying the notch and other signaling pathways during taste bud development in axolotls, as well as exploring the status of men caregivers in the United States and developing a unified framework for modeling dependence structure in multivariate longitudinal studies for complete and incomplete data. 

 

Associate Professor of Economics Mónika López-Anuarbe

López-Anuarbe, a professor at the College since 2006, is a health and inequality economist specializing in aging, caregiving and health-care disparities. Her research focuses on inter- and intra-generational transfers of money and time: she studies how family members care for each other across and within generations, despite geographic distance. López-Anuarbe is committed to conducting both national and local studies; research related to New London and to Connecticut combines her teaching, research and service talents. López-Anuarbe teaches students how to address issues of access, costs and quality of healthcare for different populations, and how strategic behavior among individuals, firms and other economic agents affects those interdependent relationships. In 2017, she was honored with the College’s Helen Mulvey Faculty Award for Fostering Student Achievement.