New and Retiring Faculty 2026

Fourteen new tenure-track professors will begin teaching at Smith this fall in disciplines ranging from economics to Jewish studies to biological sciences—among other subjects.

At a ceremony held September 8, Smith President Sarah Willie-LeBreton welcomed new faculty to “the beginning of your time as a member of this exceptional community of teachers and scholars,”  She encouraged arriving faculty members to make use of the many resources Smith has to offer—including their colleagues, who will “help you reach, teach and inspire” students. 

In June, the college bade farewell to Suk Massey, senior lecturer in East Asian languages and cultures, who retired after 20 years at Smith. Massey, a 2018 Sherrerd Teaching Prize recipient, created the Korean Language Series, a set of electronic textbooks and materials used for beginning, intermediate and advanced Korean language classes. She was instrumental, colleagues say, in expanding Korean language study in the Five Colleges network, and promoting understanding of Korean culture through public-facing events.

Here are brief biographies of faculty members new to Smith this fall.

Gabriel Bloomfield, assistant professor of English language and literature, received his Ph.D. in English and comparative literature from Columbia University. His scholarship focuses on lyric poetry of the early-modern period. In his first book, Lyric Reading in the Age of Donne, he traces the underpinnings of modern close interpretive reading in the cultural centrality of reading in genres such as the sermon. Bloomfield’s recent work continues to explore the intersection of lyric and religion, with a focus on questions arising from gender and sexuality studies. In addition to his book manuscript, he is the author of eight peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and of numerous conference papers. Before coming to Smith, Bloomfield was an assistant professor of English at the U.S. Naval Academy and a visiting assistant professor at Bates College.

Clarissa Chevalier, assistant professor in the program for the study of women, gender & sexuality, received a doctorate in art history, theory, and criticism with a specialization in interdisciplinary environmental research from the University of California San Diego. Her research merges feminist science and technology studies (STS) with contemporary environmental science, examining how scientific imaging technologies, computational models, physical simulations, and sensing systems shape understandings of ocean life, ecological change, and climate futures. Through feminist STS and media analysis, Chevalier traces the material, political, and epistemological conditions that make scientific representations possible, attending to the labor, infrastructures, and situated practices through which environmental knowledge is produced. Her research and teaching are rooted in the conviction that sustained collaboration across the arts, humanities, and sciences expands both the analytical and methodological possibilities of feminist STS. Chevalier regularly coauthors feminist STS scholarship with scientists, collaborates with artists to develop public-facing projects, and curates art/science exhibitions that stretch the possibilities of scientific data manifestation. Additionally, she is an associate editor at the open-access, peer-reviewed journal Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience.  

Dong Woo Hahm, assistant professor of economics, received his Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University. His research focuses on applied microeconomics, specializing in the economics of education, market design, and industrial organization. His empirical work is focused on causal inference using a range of methods, including reduced form analysis, structural modeling, and machine learning, to examine how individuals and institutions make decisions within educational and policy-relevant settings. Hahm’s work investigates topics such as school choice mechanisms, prestige-seeking in college applications, and the long-term labor market effects of curriculum standards. His teaching interests include empirical industrial organization, econometrics (including economic applications of machine learning), and microeconomics. Before coming to Smith, Hahm was an assistant (teaching) professor of economics at the University of Southern California.

Sara Kirshbaum, assistant professor of government and statistical and data sciences, received her doctorate in political science from Vanderbilt University. Her research interests center around American political behavior, especially as it relates to political participation, representation, and elections. At Vanderbilt, Kirshbaum was a graduate affiliate in both the Research on Individuals, Politics and Society (RIPS) Lab, and the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions (CSDI). She comes to Smith having completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship with the University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll. 

Michael George Lerner, associate professor of physics, is a computational biophysicist interested in understanding—and stopping—cancer metastasis in the basic biophysics of cell membranes, and in how proteins and nucleic acids move and interact. He earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in biophysics from the University of Michigan, and an undergraduate degree in physics from Haverford College. Lerner completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, and then spent 15 years as a professor of physics, engineering and astronomy at Earlham College. He also took time off of the academic track to work for City Year Chicago as a software engineer, and to found a small company. At Smith, Lerner’s lab will use computational techniques to probe the intersection of physics, biology, and human health, and he is ecstatic to begin his dream job at Smith in the fall.

Maytal Mark, assistant professor of Jewish studies, earned a doctorate in Hebrew/Judaic studies and history at New York University. She holds a B.A. in history from Northwestern University and an M.A. in modern Middle East history from the University of Maryland, College Park. Mark recently completed fellowships at the Center for Jewish History in New York City and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. Her current research focuses on how Jewish intellectuals in Egypt, Lebanon, and Iraq wrote about the “Jewish question” in their encounter with the Zionist movement in the first half of the twentieth century. Her research uncovers how these intellectuals responded to the Zionist movement’s core claims about Jewish history, assimilation, and national identity from their unique position as multilingual, acculturated minority intellectuals with a distinct historical relationship to minority rights and emancipation from their European counterparts. She is excited to teach courses at Smith on Middle Eastern and North African Jewish history, the history of Zionism and anti-Zionism, and global Jewish intellectual history. 

Genae Matthews, assistant professor of philosophy, earned their doctorate in philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Matthews’ primary research is in epistemology and social and feminist philosophy, and their recent work aims to explain when we are justified in drawing a connection between who we are as a person (in particular, our race, gender, class, etc.), and what we are in a position to know about the world. They are also interested in the various reasons one might have for inquiring about a question, and how those reasons interact. Their teaching interests are broad and range from ethics to political philosophy, aesthetics, and moral psychology. Matthews is a proud alum of Wellesley College and is excited to continue their mission of making the discipline of philosophy accessible to and inclusive of scholars of all genders.

Sophia Monegro, assistant professor of Africana studies, earned her doctorate in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. She is a literary scholar working at the crossroads of Black women’s intellectual history, Dominican studies,and digital humanities. The Fulbright Program, Mellon Foundation, American Association of University Women, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Equity at Washington University in St. Louis have supported Monegro’s research. Her scholarship has been published in Oxford Bibliographies in Latino Studies and the journal, Global Black Thought. As a digital humanist, Monegro’s projects democratize access to archives that account for Black intellectual production in the Atlantic world. She is the principal investigator on an ACLS Digital Justice Seed Grant to create “Cimarronas: A Black Women’s Archive of Ayiti-Quisqueya,” a trilingual digital platform that makes Black Caribbean women’s histories accessible to diverse audiences across global divides.

Jacqueline Pelham, assistant professor of biological sciences, earned her Ph.D. in biochemistry and biophysics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. After graduate school, she completed an independent faculty fellowship at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Her research focuses on understanding the molecular components of eukaryotic circadian timekeeping with the intersection of cell biology and physiology. Using fungal and mammalian models, her work explores how circadian clock proteins regulate timing and environmental responses. Her lab employs cell biology, proteomics, and biophysics to uncover how protein dynamics influence biological timekeeping at different scales. Her teaching interests include cell biology, biochemistry, and the regulation of cellular and physiological processes at the systems level. Pelham is passionate about teaching and training the next generation of scientists through engaging learning environments.

Yujie Pu, assistant professor of history, received her Ph.D. in East Asian studies from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Pu is a historian of late imperial and modern China whose research explores the intersections of medicine and law, particularly how medical knowledge shaped understandings of madness, evidence, and legal responsibility. Her current book project, Legal Justice, Medical Authority, and Madness in China, 1600–1930, examines how medical knowledge became actionable in Chinese judicial practice from the late imperial to the modern period. Drawing on criminal case records and medical writings, her work brings the history of China into broader conversations about medical expertise and legal responsibility. Before coming to Smith, Pu taught at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. At Smith, she will be teaching courses on Chinese and East Asian history, the history of science and medicine, and legal history. 

Juliana Restrepo Sanin, assistant professor of government, received her Ph.D. from Rutgers University. Her current book project, Gender, Violence, and Democracy in Latin America, analyzes violence and harassment against women politicians, its relationship with democratization efforts, and the creation and impact of different measures to address the problem. She also researches the current global autocratization wave, women’s role in it, as well as its gendered and racial impacts. Her research has been published or is forthcoming in Comparative Political Studies, Perspectives on Politics, Politics & Gender, Signs, European Journal of Politics and Gender, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Current History, Anuario Latinoamericano de Ciencia Política, and Política y Gobierno. Prior to joining Smith, Juliana was an assistant professor of political science at the University of Florida. She is excited to teach courses on Latin American politics, women and politics, and comparative politics at Smith.  

María Verónica San Martín, assistant professor of art, holds a master’s degree from The Corcoran School of Art and Design at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She is a multidisciplinary artist and educator who explores the impact of history, memory, and trauma through archives, artist books, installation, sculpture, and performance. San Martín was a fellow at the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program and a scholar at the Center for Book Arts in New York. Her work is held in more than 90 collections, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, Chile. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions and venues including Museum Meermanno in The Hague; the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.; The Print Center in Philadelphia; and BRIC Arts Media, Artists Space, Lincoln Center, and the Queens Museum in New York. 

Haider Shahbaz, assistant professor of world literatures, holds a B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of California, Los Angeles. He works at the intersections of South Asian and Black literatures, translation studies, anticolonial thought, and critical theory. An article on anticolonial internationalism and citation practices recently appeared in boundary 2. Another article, titled “Translating Toward a Dark Commons: Toni Morrison’s Beloved” was awarded the American Comparative Literature Association’s A. Owen Aldridge Prize for best essay by a graduate student and is forthcoming in Comparative Literature Studies. Shahbaz is also a literary translator who has published book-length translations from Urdu and Punjabi, and has forthcoming translations including Balraj Manra’s Compositions, 1964–1971 (Ugly Duckling Presse) and N.M. Danish’s Children, Butterfly, Flower (NYRB). He previously taught at Forman Christian College in Lahore, Pakistan.  

Kimberly Soriano, assistant professor of Latin American and Latino/a Studies, does work focusing on Latinx communities and their experiences with gentrification, carcerality, bodily autonomy, care practices, and cultural production. Soriano's research is community-centered and public-facing, appearing in outlets such as the Los Angeles Public Press. She holds a double B.A. in Chicano/a studies and African American studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, a Ph.D. in feminist studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and previously held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department at Washington University in St. Louis. She is currently working on a book manuscript titled Feminist Fugitivities in Carceral Los Angeles.