GRANVILLE, Ohio—Denison University’s Board of Trustees has recently awarded tenure to seven members of the faculty. Those who have been granted tenure and will be promoted to associate professor in the fall of 2019 are Isabelle Choquet, Xiao Jiang, May Mei, Yvonne-Marie Mokam, Heather Pool, Charles St-Georges, and Joanna Tague.
Isabelle Choquet joined Denison’s Department of Modern Languages in 2012. She earned her doctorate at the University of Virginia, and her master’s at Michigan State University and Université de Poitiers in France. Her teaching at Denison includes all levels of French language, literature and culture courses. Her scholarship focuses on literary spatial representations in the French-speaking Caribbean and Quebec, and she regularly teaches courses that relate to her research. In class, she enjoys hearing her students discuss contemporary issues. In addition to teaching, she organizes cultural events such as concerts, guest speakers, and film festivals that relate to the French language or culture. She is published in publications such as the French Review, the Journal of Haitian Studies, and the Canadian Review of Comparative Literature.
Xiao Jiang joined Denison’s Department of Economics in 2013. His research focuses on classical political economy and modern quantitative techniques. Most of his research addresses issues that are socially relevant, such as uneven development, distributional conflicts and labor issues related to international trade. In addition to teaching at Denison, he has been providing modeling and policy advice for various international and domestic policy organizations such as the United Nation’s International Labor Organization (ILO), the Association for East and Southeast Asian Countries (ASEAN), and the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) as their economic consultant. He earned his doctorate at The New School for Social Research, his master’s at the University of Denver, and his bachelor’s at Bucknell University.
May Mei joined Denison’s Department of Mathematics and Computer Science in 2013. She earned her doctorate and master’s at the University of California, Irvine, and her bachelor’s at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on two areas: applying dynamical systems to mathematical physics and integer sequences in elementary number theory. She has also collaborated with students on undergraduate research projects on these topics. This work has appeared in journals such as the Journal of Mathematical Physics, Annales Henri Poincaré, and Involve. Aside from teaching, she is the faculty advisor for Pi Mu Epsilon, the math honorary society.
Yvonne-Marie Mokam joined Denison’s Department of Modern Languages in 2013. Before coming to Denison, she had several years of experience teaching at the Université de Douala in Cameroon, the University of Arizona, and American University. She earned her doctorate at the University of Arizona, and her master’s and a bachelor’s at the Université de Yaoundé in Cameroon. Her teaching at Denison expands the offerings of the French program by including courses in postcolonial francophone Sub-Saharan African. She has developed and taught new courses as well as existing ones. Her research focuses on contemporary male and female writers from francophone postcolonial Africa and the issues of history, memory, and identity in the current global era. Her recent scholarly work has appeared in journals such as The French Review, Dalhousie French Studies, Études Littéraires Africaines, Fixxion, Interculturel Francophonies, and in Mongo Beti: une conscience universelle. She received the Tibbie Leslie Travel Grant in 2017 for travel in Martinique and Guadeloupe.
Heather Pool joined Denison’s Department of Political Science in 2013. She earned her doctorate and master’s at the University of Washington and her bachelor’s at St. John’s College - Santa Fe. She teaches courses in canonical Western political theory, American political thought, race, and law, as well as topics courses on freedom, trauma and mourning, whiteness, and Hannah Arendt. Heather’s scholarship considers the significance and effects of political violence, with a particular focus on race in the United States. Her book manuscript, Political Mourning, is currently under contract with Temple University Press; it considers moments when the deaths of everyday citizens led to political change. Her scholarly work has appeared in journals such as Polity; Law, Culture, and the Humanities; PS: Political Science and Politics; and New Political Science. Heather is director of Denison’s Philosophy, Politics, and Economics program and a member of the Black Studies Committee.
Charles St-Georges joined Denison’s Department of Modern Languages in 2013. He began his academic career studying theatre before his intellectual curiosity led him to study language and culture. He earned his doctorate and master’s at Arizona State University and his bachelor’s at Brigham Young University. He has taught courses in Spanish, Queer Studies, and French, and has served as Production Editor for the academic journal Chasqui. His research mainly focuses on the intersections between normative discourse and representations of time in narratives from the Hispanic world. He is particularly concerned with the relationship between Western historicism, the supposedly apolitical realm of chronological time, and the persistent use of ghosts and specters to represent historical injustice in Latin American and Peninsular film.
Joanna Tague joined Denison’s History Department in 2012. She earned her doctorate and master’s at the University of California, Davis, her master’s at Ohio University, and her bachelor’s at George Washington University—after which she served as a Peace Corps volunteer in South Africa. At Denison, she teaches courses on Pre-Colonial Africa, Africa Since 1880, Humanitarianism, Women and Gender, and African Liberation Movements. Her research explores an era in which a range of historical actors viewed African refugees as resources — rather than burdens — to the local host society. Her book (Displaced Mozambicans in Postcolonial Tanzania: Refugee Power) is in-press with Routledge and she co-edited the book African Asylum at a Crossroads: Activism, Expert Testimony and Refugee Rights with Ohio University Press. She has published with the International Journal of African Historical Studies, the Portuguese Journal of Social Science, and Indiana University Press. Her research has been supported by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the National History Center, the Mellon Foundation, the Kluge Center, the Library of Congress, the U.S. Department of Education, and Fulbright-Hays.