Fresh Faces
From Kenyon News - August 29, 2019
The following 10 faculty members will assume tenure track positions at Kenyon during the 2019-20 academic year, although Ruth Heindel will not begin teaching until the spring semester begins in January 2020. Brad Hostetler and Diego del Río Arrillaga have previously taught at Kenyon in non-tenure track positions.
Diego del Río Arrillaga, assistant professor of Spanish
2017 — Doctor of Philosophy from Yale University
2014 — Master of Philosophy from Yale University
2014 — Master of Arts from Yale University
2012 — Master of Arts from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
2009 — Bachelor of Arts from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Diego del Río Arrillaga’s research interests include transatlantic studies (Spain and Latin America), avant-garde movements, literary theory, film and sound studies, and digital humanities. His interest in transatlantic connections can be traced back to his education in Mexico and his own background as a descendant of Spanish Civil War exiles.
Khadene Harris, instructor of anthropology
2017 — Master of Arts from Northwestern University
2010 — Master of Arts from University of the West Indies
2005 — Bachelor of Arts from University of the West Indies
Ruth Heindel, Dorothy and Thomas Jegla Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies
2017 — Doctor of Philosophy from Dartmouth College
2010 — Bachelor of Science from Brown University
Ruth Heindel is a postdoc at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado–Boulder. She is an interdisciplinary earth scientist whose research focuses on biogeochemical cycling and wind-driven processes in cold regions. Heindel has conducted field research in Greenland, Antarctica and the Colorado Front Range. Her field-based approach combines methods from ecology, geomorphology, and biogeochemistry to answer questions about the impact of changing climate and land use on sensitive alpine and polar ecosystems.
Bradley Hostetler, assistant professor of art history
2016 — Doctor of Philosophy from Florida State University
2009 — Master of Arts from Florida State University
2002 — Bachelor of Arts from Wheaton College (Illinois)
Brad Hostetler teaches courses on the art and architecture of the ancient and medieval Mediterranean. His primary research interest is in the visual culture of the Byzantine Empire (330–1453), specifically the relationships between texts and images. His research focuses on the presentation of works of art in rhetorical descriptions (ekphrasis) and poetry (epigrams), as well as the visual and material integration of inscribed texts (epigraphy) on objects and monuments.
Iris Levin, assistant professor of biology and environmental studies
2012 — Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Missouri–St. Louis
2005 — Bachelor of Arts from Bowdoin College
Iris Levin comes to Kenyon following faculty appointments at Agnes Scott College and Grinnell College and a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Colorado–Boulder. Levin is an integrative biologist who has worked in the Galapagos Islands studying seabirds and their parasites, and she and her students currently study the behavior and evolutionary ecology of barn swallows.
Huachen Li, assistant professor of economics
2019 — Doctor of Philosophy from North Carolina State University
2013 — Master of Arts from Wake Forest University
2012 — Bachelor of Arts from the College of Wooster
Huachen Li’s training is in macroeconomics and applied time series. He works on application and methods of vector autoregressions with time-varying parameters and stochastic volatility on the labor market. In his spare time, he enjoys guitar, chess and watching the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Catherine Mauck, assistant professor of chemistry
2017 — Doctor of Philosophy from Northwestern University
2009 — Bachelor of Arts from Oberlin College
After receiving her B.A. in chemistry, Katie Mauck worked at a start-up focused on quantum dot-based light-emitting technologies, followed by a Fulbright fellowship to the Musee National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, France. After receiving her Ph.D., she completed a postdoctoral position in the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT. Her research focuses on the characterization of the vibrational and electronic properties of optically active semiconductor materials.
Keija K. Parssinen, assistant professor of English
2009 — Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa
2003 — Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University
Keija Parssinen is the author of the novels “The Ruins of Us” and “The Unraveling of Mercy Louis.” Her writing has appeared in Slate, Salon, Slice, The Brooklyn Quarterly, World Literature Today, The Arkansas International, New Delta Review, and elsewhere, and has been supported by fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Corporation of Yaddo, Playa Summer Lake, Vermont Studio Center and the Oklahoma Center for the Humanities. She was a Truman Capote Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Ira Sukrungruang, Richard L. Thomas Professor of Creative Writing
2002 — Master of Fine Arts from the Ohio State University
1998 — Bachelor of Arts from Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Ira Sukrungruang is the author of three nonfiction books, “Buddha’s Dog and Other Meditations,” “Southside Buddhist” and “Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy;” the short story collection “The Melting Season” and the poetry collection “In Thailand It Is Night.” He is the recipient of the 2015 American Book Award, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Nonfiction Literature, an Arts and Letters Fellowship and the Emerging Writer Fellowship. His work has appeared in many literary journals, including Post Road, The Sun and Creative Nonfiction.
Orchid Tierney, assistant professor of English
2019 — Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania
2013 — Master of Arts from the University of Otago, New Zealand
2001 — Bachelor of Arts from the University of Otago, New Zealand
Orchid Tierney teaches American and Anglophone poetry with a specific focus on the literatures of the Pacific region. Her wide ranging scholarly interests include environmental humanities, sound studies and the digital humanities. Her current book project investigates the systems and representations of waste and waste management in contemporary poetry and film. She is the author of “a year of misreading of the wildcats” and five chapbooks. Her scholarship and reviews have been published in journals such as Jacket2 and the Journal of Modern Literature.