Granting Tenure

Denison University’s Board of Trustees has awarded tenure to six members of the faculty. Those who have been granted tenure and will be promoted to associate professor in the fall are Lauren Araiza, Nida Bikmen, Andy McCall, Sarah Rundell, Jack Shuler and Taku Suzuki. “It is always exciting to welcome young colleagues into the ranks of senior faculty and to celebrate the energy they bring to teaching, scholarship and campus activities,” said Denison President Dale T. Knobel. Lauren Araiza joined Denison’s Department of History and Black Studies Program in 2007 and holds a Master of Arts and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelor of Arts from Williams College. Araiza is currently preparing a manuscript for publication, titled “To March for Others: The Black Freedom Struggle and United Farm Workers.” Her book uses the relationships between the UFW, a union of primarily Mexican American agricultural workers, and the major civil rights organizations of the 1960s and 1970s to explore the various attitudes and approaches towards multiracial coalition building within the black freedom struggle. Araiza teaches courses in African American history and the Civil Rights Movement, the intellectual history of Black Power, the American West, and comparative social movements. Her other teaching interests include labor history, comparative race and ethnicity, and oral history. Nida Bikmen joined the Department of Psychology at Denison in 2007 and holds a Ph.D. from City University of New York and an undergraduate degree from Bogazici University in Turkey. Bikmen is a social/personality psychologist interested in studying issues of diversity and intergroup relations. Bikmen conducts research on representations of group history, social identity and intergroup contact among various populations including immigrant communities as well as college students. Her most recent studies examine effects of narrative constructions of group history on intellectual performance of members of groups that are stigmatized in academic domains, and the role of power inequalities in intergroup contact. Bikmen teaches courses in introductory psychology, research methods, social psychology, psychology of diversity and a seminar on psychology of power relations. Andy McCall joined Denison’s Department of Biology in the fall of 2006 and holds a Master of Science and Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis, a Master of Science from the University of Canterbury and a Bachelor of Arts from Carleton College. He is a plant ecologist with special interests in pollination biology and plant-herbivore interactions. His current topics of research include how variability in herbivore pressure affects the evolution of induced resistance in wild radish; how and why florivores (things that eat flowers) choose which flowers to eat in Datura wrightii, commonly known as sacred datura; and the factors that affect butterfly species richness and diversity in Northern California. McCall teaches introduction to the science of biology, evolution and ecology, plant ecology and plant evolution and reproduction. Sarah Rundell joined the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Denison in 2007 and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and an Artium Baccalaureatus from Bryn Mawr College. Rundell’s research is in algebraic and topological combinatorics. Recently, she has been particularly interested in mathematical coloring complexes. Rundell teaches essentials of calculus, calculus II, combinatorics, abstract algebra II, introduction to proofs and a first-year studies course titled “Mathematical Perspective Drawing.” Jack Shuler joined Denison’s Department of English in 2007 and holds a Ph.D. from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, a Masters of Fine Arts from Brooklyn College and a Bachelor of Arts from Guilford College. He has published two books, “Calling Out Liberty: The Stono Slave Rebellion and the Universal Struggle for Human Rights” and “Blood and Bone: Truth and Reconciliation in a Southern Town.” Shuler’s criticism, interviews, reviews and poems have appeared in the Columbia Journal of American Studies, Southern Studies, South Carolina Review, Fast Capitalism, Reconstructions: Studies in Contemporary Culture, Hanging Loose, The Brooklyn Review, Big City Lit, and Failbetter. Shuler teaches American literature before 1900, writing and human rights, and special topics courses on American literature and slavery. Taku Suzuki joined the International Studies Program at Denison in 2007 and holds a Master of Arts and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and a Bachelor of Arts from Meiji Gakuin University in Yokohama, Japan. Suzuki has conducted field research in the Okinawan immigrant communities in eastern Bolivia and Okinawan-Bolivian immigrant communities in eastern Japan. The research resulted in the publication of “Embodying Belonging: Racializing Okinawan Diaspora in Bolivia and Japan” in 2010. He is currently interested in transnational peace activism and tourism in Okinawa and teaches courses in introductory international studies, themes and approaches in international studies, globalization and diversification of Japanese society, trans-Pacific Asian communities and identities, sociocultural analysis of travel and tourism, and formations of collective memory in society. His research articles, book chapters and reviews have appeared in books and journals; including “Identities;” “Diasporic Ruptures;” “Diaspora;” “Critical Asian Studies;” “Anthropology News;” “Heritage, Nationhood, and Language;” “Tourist Studies;” and “Journal of Asian Studies.”