The Nine New Women on the Brown University Faculty

Brown University, the prestigious Ivy League educational institution in Providence, Rhode Island, has 30 new faculty members on campus this year. Nine of the new faculty members are women. None teach in the life sciences or the physical sciences.

(L to R) Top row: Tamara Chin, Lisa DiCarlo, Hannah Freed-Thall, Leela Gandhi, and Jane Kamensky.
Bottom row: Jennifer Lambe, Monica Martinez, Katherine Mason, and Prerna Singh.

Tamara Chin is an associate professor of comparative literature. From 2006 to 2013, she was an assistant professor of comparative literature at the University of Chicago. Dr. Chin is the author of the new book Savage Exchange: Han Imperialism, Chinese Literary Style, and the Economic Imagination (Harvard University Asia Center, 2014). She is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University and holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley.

Lisa DiCarlo is a lecturer in sociology. She had taught at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and was a faculty fellow at Philadelphia University. Dr. DiCarlo holds a bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Brown University.

Hannah Freed-Thall is an assistant professor of comparative literature. Dr. Freed-Thall began her college career as a music student, working toward a degree in violin performance at the New England Conservatory in Boston. But she transferred to Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and earned a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature. Dr. Freed-Thall earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and then had a three-year term as a Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow in the Princeton Society of Fellows.

Leela Gandhi is the John Hawkes Professor of Humanities and English. She is the great-granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi. Professor Gandhi previously taught at the University of Chicago and La Trobe University in Australia. Dr. Gandhi is a graduate of the University of Delhi and earned a a master’s degree and a Ph.D. at Oxford University in England. Her most recent book is The Common Cause: Postcolonial Ethics and the Practice of Democracy, 1900-1955 (University of Chicago Press, 2014).

Jane Kamensky is the inaugural Mary Ann Lippitt Professor of American History. She had taught at Brandeis University for 21 years. She is currently on leave working on a new book as the Cornille Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Newhouse Center for Humanities at Wellesley College. Professor Kamensky is the author of The Exchange Artist: The Tale of High-Flying Financial Speculation and America’s First Banking Collapse (Viking, 2008) and the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution (Oxford Univesity Press, 2012). She holds a bachelor’s degree and a Ph.D. in history from Yale University.

Jennifer Lambe is an assistant professor of history. She is teaching a first-year seminar on modern Caribbean history. Dr. Lambe is currently working on a book titled Madhouse: Cuban History From the Margins. She is a graduate of Brown University, where she majored in history and gender studies. Dr. Lambe earned a Ph.D. in Latin American and Caribbean history at Yale University.

Monica Martinez is an assistant professor of American studies and ethnic studies. She held the Carlos E. Castañeda Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is completing work on a book entitled, ‘Inherited Loss’: Reckoning With Anti-Mexican Violence. Dr. Martinez is a graduate of Brown University. She holds two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. from Yale University.

Katherine Mason is an assistant professor of anthropology. She is working on a book entitled After SARS: The Rebirth of Public Health in a Chinese City of Immigrants. She is teaching a course on the anthropology of China this fall and will teach a graduate seminar on anthropology and bio-ethics in the spring. Before coming to Brown, she taught for two years in the Health and Societies program at the University of Pennsylvania, and then spent one year as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at Columbia University. Dr. Mason is a graduate of Yale University and holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology from Harvard University.

Prerna Singh is the Mahatma Gandhi Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Studies. Before coming to Brown, Dr. Singh was an assistant professor in the department of government at Harvard University. Dr. Singh is a native of India and a graduate of the University of Delhi. She began her graduate work in political science at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom before moving on to Princeton University, where she received her Ph.D. in politics.