Denison University’s Board of Trustees has recently awarded tenure to six members of the faculty. Those who have been granted tenure and will be promoted to associate professor in the fall of 2020 are John Davis, Melissa Huerta, Melanie Lott, Catherine Stuer, David White, and Shao-yun Yang. They each will be granted the title of associate professor in the Fall of 2020.
John Davis joined Denison’s Department of Anthropology and Sociology in 2012. He earned his master’s and doctorate degrees at the University of Stanford, and his bachelor’s degree at Cornell University. Davis is a socio-cultural anthropologist whose work explores the “social life” of rights by critically analyzing the processes by which transnational discourses and practices of human rights intersect with specific national and cultural contexts to shape everyday life. He is currently completing a book manuscript titled “Animating Rights in Japan: The Politics of Buraku Liberation.” Davis also has two new research projects underway. The first utilizes the case of burakumin as an opportunity to reconsider theories of race and minority subjectivity. Davis’s second line of research compares how concepts of race and ethnicity factor into genetics research in Japan and the United States respectively.
