This semester, four new instructors have joined Arts & Sciences departments and programs. Welcome to our newest faculty!
Dino Christenson, Department of Political Science
Dino Christenson, PhD, joins the Department of Political Science as an associate professor. Christenson’s recent work explores presidential voting behavior, campaign dynamics in primary elections, the coalition strategies of interest groups, and public opinion and the media environment of institutional outcomes. His work has received the Editors’ Choice Article Award from Political Analysis, the Best Article Award by the Law & Courts Section of APSA, as well as the Best Article Award from Political Research Quarterly. He is coauthor of The Myth of the Imperial Presidency: How Public Opinion Checks the Unilateral Executive (University of Chicago Press, 2020) and Applied Social Science Methodology: An Introductory Guide (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Theresa Gildner, Department of Anthropology
Theresa Gildner, PhD, joins the Department of Anthropology as an assistant professor. Gildner is a human biologist whose research expertise is biocultural health determinants. Her work is primarily concerned with factors that influence parasitic disease, with a particular focus parasitic worms called helminths that infect more than a quarter of the global population. She currently studies parasite infection patterns among indigenous Shuar of Amazonian Ecuador. She is also co-PI of the Rural Embodiment and Child Health (REACH) Study, which explores associations between lifestyle variation, ecological factors, and child health in rural and low-income regions of the Southern United States. In addition, as a postdoctoral fellow at Dartmouth College she co-founded the COVID-19 and Reproductive Effects (CARE) Study.
Carol Jenkins, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
Carol Jenkins, PhD, joins the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures as a lecturer. Jenkins’ research focuses on literary expressions of sociopolitical developments, particularly in the first half of the 19th and early years of the 20th centuries. She previously served as a teaching professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where she developed courses on topics as diverse as crime stories, sports and leisure, German social democracy, children’s literature, and the culture of the Weimar Republic. In her teaching, she strives to make the field of German language and literatures appealing to a more diverse body of students. She earned her doctorate at Washington University.
Claudia Swan, Department of Art History and Archaeology
Claudia Swan, PhD, joins the Department of Art History and Archaeology as the inaugural Mark Steinberg Weil Professor of Art History. Swan’s principal scholarly commitment is to the history of northern European art, with a focus on the Netherlands in the 17th century. Her work on early modern art and visual culture is informed by and contributes to intersections of art history, history of science, material culture studies, and the history of global trade and politics. She has edited and authored five books, including Rarities of These Lands. Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Dutch Golden Age (Princeton University Press). She earned her doctorate at Columbia University and most recently served on the faculty at Northwestern University.
