Holy Cross Announces Seven New Faculty Hires for 2016-17 Academic Year

In her annual address to the College for the 2016-17 academic year, Margaret Freije, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the College, announced the hiring of seven new faculty members. These new faculty members include five new tenure-track professors and two postdoctoral teaching fellows:

Gregory Burnep, assistant professor of political science, earned his B.A. in political science from the College of the Holy Cross and his Ph.D. in political science from Boston College. He specializes in American politics and public policy and has presented at various conferences including at the annual meetings of the New England Political Science Association and the Northeast Political Science Association. While at Boston College, Burnep was recognized through a variety of awards, including the Donald J. White Teaching Excellence Award in 2014 and the Presidential Fellowship from 2010-2015.

Oliver Francisco de la Paz, associate professor of English, earned his B.A. in English and B.S. in biology from Loyola Marymount University and his M.F.A. in poetry from Arizona State University. His focus is in the field of creative writing, specifically in poetry and hybrid genres, contemporary American poetry, and Asian American poetry. He has published four books of poetry, including “Post Subject: A Fable” (University of Akron Press, 2014) and “Requiem for the Orchard” (University of Akron Press, 2010), winner of the Akron Poetry Prize. With the poet Stacey Lynn Brown he edited “A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry” (University of Akron Press, 2012). He was a recipient of a NYFA Fellowship Award and his work has appeared in journals like Virginia Quarterly Review and North American Review, as well as in anthologies such as “Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation” (University of Illinois Press, 2004).

Rodrigo Fuentes, assistant professor of Spanish, earned his B.A. in comparative literature and politics, philosophy, and economics from the University of Pennsylvania, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in romance studies from Cornell University. Specializing in contemporary Central American literature, he spent the last two years teaching courses at Southern Connecticut State University. Fuentes received the short story award II Premio Centroamericano de Carátula de Cuento Breve in 2014 and recently published his first collection of short stories in French translation, with Spanish editions coming out later this year and in 2017.

Karen V. Guth, assistant professor of religious studies, earned a B.A. in religion from Furman University; an M.Th. with a concentration in literature, theology, and the arts from the University of Glasgow; an M.T.S. with a concentration in religion and society from Harvard University Divinity School; and her Ph.D. in religious ethics from the University of Virginia. Her research interests include Christian social ethics, political theology, feminist ethics and theologies, and religion in American public life. She is the author of “Christian Ethics at the Boundary: Feminism and Theologies of Public Life” (Fortress Press, 2015), as well as several articles and essays published in peer-reviewed journals and publications, such as Theology Today and the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics. Guth also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics.

Madigan Haley, assistant professor of English, earned a B.A. in English from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a master 2 in literature, theories, modernity from the Universite de Paris 7, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia. His research interests include 20th and 21st century British literature, comparative world literatures, and transnational modernism. Haley co-edited “A Companion to the English Novel” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015), and has published articles on the global novel in the minnesota review and in Novel: A Forum on Fiction.

Nurhaizatul Jamil, postdoctoral teaching fellow in sociology and anthropology, earned a B. Soc. Sc. in political science and an M. Soc. Sc. in sociology from the National University of Singapore, and a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Northwestern University. Her research interests include religious studies, ethnographies of education, postcolonial theory, consumption and popular culture, social media, and gender and sexuality studies. She recently published an article titled “‘You Are My Garment’: Muslim Women, Religious Education, and Self-Transformation in Contemporary Singapore” in the Asian Studies Review (2016), and is a member of the American Anthropological Association, and the Society for the Anthropology of Religion. Her dissertation research was funded by numerous intra-mural grants as well the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation. At Holy Cross, she will be working on journal publications as well as teach courses on the anthropological perspective and Islam, gender, and globalization.

Ke Ren, postdoctoral teaching fellow in history, earned his B.A. in history and economics from the University of California, Berkeley and his M.A. and Ph.D. in history at Johns Hopkins University. His research interests include the cultural and intellectual history of late imperial and modern China, Sino-Western relations, and transnationalism. Ren is currently working on a biography of a Qing dynasty diplomat who became a cultural celebrity in fin-de-siècle Paris. Ren has taught courses at Bates College and Indiana University South Bend, and has given numerous presentations at both national and international conferences. At Holy Cross, he is teaching classes on World War II in East Asia and China and the world.