Four Hamilton College faculty members were approved for tenure by the college's board of trustees during their recent meeting. The granting of tenure is based on recommendations of the vice president for academic affairs and dean of faculty, and the committee on appointments, with the president of the college presenting final recommendations to the board of trustees.
Faculty receiving tenure are: Doran Larson, department of English; Craig T. Latrell, department of theatre and dance; Tracy D. Sharpley-Whiting, Africana studies program; and Mitchell L. Stevens, department of sociology.
Doran Larson came to Hamilton in 1998 as an assistant professor of English. Larson is a prolific author, with his most recent novella, Syzygy, published in The Iowa Review. His story, "Morphine," which had been originally published in The Virginia Quarterly, was selected for The Best American Short Stories of 1997, which featured Garrison Keillor as guest editor. Larson is also the author of Marginalia (1997) and The Big Deal (1985). He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and a master's and Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Larson had previously taught in the English departments of the University of Texas, San Antonio, and the University of Wisconsin.
Craig Latrell was chair of the University of Denver theatre department before coming to Hamilton in 2000. He earned a D.F.A. and M.F.A in theatre history and criticism from Yale University School of Drama. He has published extensively for Asian Theatre Journal, Commentary, and Theater and Converging Interests: Traders, Travelers and Tourists in Southeast Asia. Latrell has directed numerous professional productions for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Empty Space Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre and University of Washington. Latrell is an officer of the Association for Asian Performance and has received a Fulbright Dissertation Research Award, a Fulbright Senior Lecturer Award and National Endowment for the Arts Director Fellowship.
Tracy Sharpley-Whiting joined the Hamilton faculty in 2001 as visiting professor of Africana studies. She earned a Ph.D. in French studies from Brown University and had previously taught at Purdue University, where she served as director of the African American Studies and Research Center. She has written and edited several books, including The Black Feminist Reader (with Joy James, 2000); Black Venuses: Sexualized Savages, Primal Fears and Primitive Narratives in French (1999); and Spoils of War: Women of Color, Cultures & Revolutions, co-edited with Renee White, which received Honorable Mention for Outstanding Book by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America. Sharpley-Whiting has served as series editor for Philosophy and Race (co-editor Robert Bernasconi) State University of New York Press, and has contributed several book chapters and scholarly articles.
Mitchell Stevens joined the Hamilton faculty in 1996. He is an organizational sociologist with a particular interest in education issues and inter-organizational relations. His first book, Kingdom of Children: Culture and Controversy in the Homeschooling Movement, a study of the American homeschool movement, was published by Princeton University Press in 2001. A 1999-2000 NAE/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, Stevens' current research concerns the organization of decision making in college admissions. He has published in Work & Occupations, Studies in Symbolic Interaction, The Annual Review of Sociology, and other journals. Stevens earned a Ph.D and master's degree from Northwestern University and a bachelor's degree from Macalester College.
