Arts and Sciences Faculty Receive Tenure and Promotions

Faculty from departments and programs across the Arts and Sciences have been promoted, and 12 were awarded tenure.

The Dartmouth Board of Trustees approved the promotions of faculty across the Arts and Sciences on June 7.

This year, seven faculty members were promoted to full professor; 10 were promoted to associate professor and granted tenure; and two associate professors were granted tenure.

"The faculty awarded tenure and promotion are exemplary scholars and teachers," says Elizabeth F. Smith, dean of the Faculty of the Arts and Sciences. "I look forward to seeing them continue to inspire and influence their students, colleagues, and disciplines at large for years to come."

Faculty at Dartmouth are evaluated for promotion and tenure in three areas through a rigorous evaluation process: research, teaching, and service. The faculty promotions take effect on July 1.

The following faculty were promoted to full professor.

Leslie Butler, Professor of History
Butler is an American intellectual and cultural historian, with an emphasis on the 19th century. She is the author of two books: Consistent Democracy: The "Woman Question" and Self-Government in Nineteenth Century America and Critical Americans: Victorian Intellectuals and Transatlantic Liberal Reform. Additional scholarship includes articles and contributions to the Cambridge History of America and The Oxford Illustrated History of the United States. Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Huntington Library, American Antiquarian Society, and Massachusetts Historical Society.

Michael Cox, Professor of Environmental Studies
Cox is an environmental social scientist specializing in environmental governance, with a particular emphasis on community-based natural resource management. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in the Southwestern United States and the Dominican Republic. His first book, Common Boundaries: The Theory and Practice of Environmental Property, delves into the significance of environmental property rights across academic disciplines, cultures, and types of environment policy. Additionally, Cox co-hosts the In Common podcast, which features discussions of the lives, research, and endeavors of scholars and practitioners dedicated to fostering sustainable human-environment interactions.

Vievee Elaure Francis, Professor of English and Creative Writing
One of the most prominent contemporary American poets working today, Francis has published four books: Blue-Tail Fly, Horse in the Dark, Forest Primeval, and The Shared World. More than 100 individual publications of her poems can be found in literary journals, with many collected in prestigious anthologies, including six selections for Best American Poetry since 2010. Her libretti for The Ritual of Breath Is the Rite to Resist and Marvin Gaye Songs premiered in 2022 and 2023, respectively, the former at Dartmouth. Among her many honors, Francis is the recipient of the Sewanee Fellowship, Aiken-Taylor Award, Lannan Foundation Fellowship, Kingsley-Tufts Award, and most recently, a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Katie Hornstein, Professor of Art History
Hornstein plots an alternative history of European art that is careful not to valorize the singular achievements of individual artists apart from the contested spaces where their works were produced and circulated. She is the author of two books, Myth and Menagerie: Seeing Lions in the Nineteenth Century and Picturing War in France, 1792-1856. In her books, articles, and book chapters, she brings her interdisciplinary training in art history, cultural history, and media studies to bear on a variety of visual objects, from oil paintings to lion pelts. She embraces current debates in the humanities such as the representation and uses of non-human animal bodies in modern material and visual culture. Among her many grants and awards, Hornstein received three fellowships from the ACLS.

Jason Houle, Professor of Sociology
Houle is a sociologist interested in social disparities in mental health, processes of social stratification and mobility, and life course sociology. He is the coauthor of A Dream Defaulted: The Student Loan Crisis Among Black Borrowers and has authored numerous scholarly articles in top sociology journals. Houle has received grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, and a fellowship from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Lynn Patyk, Professor of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Studies
Patyk is a scholar of Russian literature and culture from the 19th century to the present and a specialist in the 'literature' of Russian political communication. Her scholarship explores Russian literature in its representation of authoritarianism, political violence, and terrorism. Patyk's new and third book, Funny Dostoevsky, edited with Irina Erman, places comedy and humor at the center of Dostoevsky's artistic and spiritual vision. She is also the author of Dostoevsky's Provocateurs and Written in Blood: Revolutionary Terrorism and Russian Literary Culture, 1861-1881.

Tricia Treacy, Professor of Studio Art
Treacy's artistic work combines traditional fine arts and contemporary design methods, spanning analog and digital media—from ink, woodcut, and letterpress to AI tools. She has participated in more than two dozen artists' books and won over 30 grants and awards, including three Fulbright Scholar Recommendations and the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, one of the highest recognitions in the arts. Treacy's work can be found in more than 50 collections, including the National Library of the Netherlands in the Hague, the Virginia Commonwealth University Special Collections in Doha Qatar, the Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and SFMOMA.

The following faculty were promoted to associate professor, with tenure. 

Luis Alvarez León, Associate Professor of Geography
Alvarez León's research focuses on the spatialization of the digital economy. He shows how geospatial technologies like satellite mapping, remote sensing, and geolocation data are central to the modern digital economy and how control of the physical infrastructure that generates these data and the regulatory structures that govern access to them are key sources of power. He has authored numerous journal articles, book chapters, and scholarly commentaries. Among his many honors, Alvarez León received the 2024 Karen E. Wetterhahn Memorial Award for Distinguished Creative or Scholarly Achievement. His book, The Map in the Machine: Charting the Spatial Architecture of Digital Capitalism, was published in May.

Danielle Callegari, Associate Professor of French and Italian 
Callegari is a specialist in the cultural history of food in pre-modern Italy and a scholar of medieval Italian literature, especially Dante. She reexamines foundational texts in the Italian literary tradition under the lens of cultural studies and food studies, and connects lessons about households, communities, and society in pre-modern Italy to parallel present concerns. A productive scholar, she is the author of a monograph, Dante's Gluttons: Food and Society from the Convivio to the Comedy, as well as numerous scholarly articles and book reviews. A second book is underway, Recipes for Success: Power and Politics in the Italian Cookbook.

James Dobson, Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing
Dobson is a specialist in critical computational studies and literary theory. His scholarship focuses on the history, theory, and technology of computational methods of inquiry, especially as they are applied in the humanities. He has been an influential voice in offering critical appraisal of the algorithmic methods of data analysis at work in digital humanities. Dobson is the author of numerous scholarly articles and three books: The Birth of Computer Vision, Modernity and Autobiography in Nineteenth-Century America: Literary Representations of Communication and Transportation Technologies, and Critical Digital Humanities: The Search for a Methodology.

William Leavitt, Associate Professor of Earth Sciences
Leavitt explores the fundamental microbiological and environmental controls that drive Earth's biogeochemical cycles. He has advanced the tool of chemical isotopic analysis to illuminate the cycling of carbon and sulfur during Earth's history, and methane cycling on Earth today. Among his fellowships and honors he was named a Simons Early Career Investigator in Marine Microbial Ecology and Evolution. Leavitt has received funding from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the Simons Foundation, among others. His work has been published by journals including Applied & Environmental Microbiology, Geology, Geobiology, and Environmental Microbiology.

Jeremy Manning, Associate Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Manning is a computational cognitive neuroscientist. His lab studies learning, memory, and brain network dynamics, with a special interest in developing personalized learning and teaching tools. Manning is the recipient of numerous fellowships and honors, including an NSF Career Award. His research is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, among others.

Marisa Palucis, Associate Professor of Earth Sciences
Palucis studies the features of the Earth's surface and the forces that shape them. Her lab investigates the evolution of landscapes and sedimentary deposits under a changing climate, with implications for constraining the rates and histories of aqueous processes on paleo-landscapes and other planetary surfaces, and hazard prediction and mitigation during extreme events. She has received grants and fellowships from the National Sciences Foundation and NASA, including the NASA Planetary Science Early Career Award. Her published research appears in journals including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, GSA Bulletin, and Journal of Geophysical Research - Earth Surface.

Kathleen Powers, Associate Professor of Government 
Powers researches foreign policy, public opinion, and international security using theories and concepts from psychology. Much of her work examines how nationalism and values shape foreign policy public opinion. Her book, Nationalisms in International Politics, received the International Society of Political Psychology's 2023 David O. Sears award for the best book on the psychology of mass politics. Her research has been published in journals including the American Journal of Political Science, Foreign Policy Analysis, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Politics, and Political Psychology.

Alberto Quattrini Li, Associate Professor of Computer Science 
Quattrini Li researches autonomous mobile robotics, artificial intelligence, and agents and multiagent systems. He co-directs the Reality and Robotics Lab. Quattrini Li's research has been published in top robotics international conferences and journals such as the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation and the International Journal of Robotics Research. Among his many grants and fellowships, he received an NSF Career Award to study algorithms and systems for autonomous aquatic exploration with resilient low-cost robot teams. His research has had impact beyond robotics, supporting important applications such as underwater archaeology and lake monitoring.

Caroline Robertson, Associate Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Robertson is a cognitive neuroscientist, whose work focuses on understanding how memory and perceptual systems interact in the human brain. Her work also targets how some of these mechanisms may change in brains that are neurodivergent. Among her many honors and fellowships, Robertson has been named a NARSAD Young Investigator of the Brain and Behavior Foundation, a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, and an NSF Career Awardee. Her research has been published in top journals including Nature Neuroscience, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, PNAS, Current Biology, and Journal of Neuroscience.

Gregory Sharp, Associate Professor of Sociology
Sharp is interested in how the places in which people live, work, and play are key features and determinants of social inequality and health in the U.S. Recent research focuses on neighborhood environments and residents' attitudes, community engagement, and health, including the risk of diabetes, obesity, hypertension, and smoking. His work has appeared in various interdisciplinary journals, including Demography, Social Science & Medicine, Social Problems, Social Science Research, and City & Community. He has received grants from such funding agencies as the National Institutes of Health and the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences.

The following associate professors were awarded tenure. 

Darlene Drummond, Associate Professor of Speech 
Drummond's research focuses on health communication, with an emphasis on how patients and providers communicate about chronic illness, infectious disease, and cancer care. She is particularly interested in communication between Black patients and health care providers. This applied research aims to identify specific language and communication strategies that are effective in helping people meet their healthcare needs, and helping health care providers better meet the needs of diverse patients. Drummond also serves as an adjunct associate professor at the Dartmouth Institute of the Geisel School of Medicine.

Stuart Finkel, Associate Professor of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Studies 
Finkel is a scholar of Russian history specializing in the late imperial and Soviet eras. He examines the role of the intelligentsia after the two revolutions of 1917 in creating a distinctly Soviet public sphere and the subsequent cultural "Bolshevizing" of civil society and consolidation of the power of the secret police. Finkel is the author of numerous scholarly articles and two books, On the Ideological Front: The Russian Intelligentsia and the Making of the Soviet Public Sphere and Revolutionary Philanthropy: Aid to Political Prisoners and Exiles in Late Imperial Russia. A third monograph, Defending the Enemy: The Political Red Cross and Aid to Soviet Political Prisoners, is slated for 2026.