Colorado College has hired six outstanding tenure-track professors this year – all of its first choices. Meet our new faculty members:

Marie Davis-Green: Assistant Professor of Drama and Dance

Davis-Green spent the past four years as an assistant professor at the University of Northern Colorado. She earned her M.F.A. in set and costume design from Yale University in 2003 and her B.A. in performing arts from Colorado State University. At the University of Northern Colorado’s department of theatre arts and dance, she served as a theatre design generalist, scene shop coordinator/prop shop supervisor, and, more recently, as the head of the set design program. She was set designer of a Little Theatre of the Rockies production of “Hairspray” in 2008, as well as the U.S. premiere of “Fighting Words” at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 2002, with many productions at UNC in the interim. The New York Times featured “Fighting Words” when it opened.

Esteban M. Gómez: Instructor of Anthropology

Gómez comes to Colorado College from the University of California system, having received his B.A. at Santa Cruz and his M.A. from Berkeley. He plans to receive his Ph.D. from Berkeley this year. His dissertation, titled “Archaeology of the Colonial Period Gulf of Fonseca, Eastern El Salvador,” uses traditional archaeological techniques, ethnohistoric accounts, and unpublished archival documents. He has conducted research in both English and Spanish. The National Science Foundation awarded Esteban a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant in 2006. At Berkeley, he earned the Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award after his first semester of teaching in 2003.

Emilie Gray: Assistant Professor of Biology

Gray earned her M.Sc. in environmental studies from the University of Orleans and the Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon, France in 1999, having written her major thesis in French. She earned her Ph.D. in eco-physiology from the University of California, Irvine in 2005. After spending the 2005-06 academic year working as a post-doctoral research associate in the department of zoology at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, Gray comes to Colorado College from the Eck Center for Global Health, department of biological sciences, at the University of Notre Dame, where she held another post-doctoral fellowship. An evolutionary physiologist with strong interests in ecology, she studies how animals adapt to their environment with particular emphasis on gas exchange and water balance in mosquitoes. Gray’s multinational background (she grew up in France) and interests (she works in sub-Saharan Africa) provide opportunities for expanding the curriculum.

Andreea Marinescu: Instructor of Spanish

A native of Romania, Marinescu learned Spanish by watching sitcoms. She went to the University of Michigan to study pharmacology but decided to get some formal training in Spanish. She earned her B.A. in Spanish and cellular and molecular biology and is working toward her Ph.D. in Romance languages and literatures from the University of Michigan. Her dissertation, “Dialoguing Across Catastrophes: Chilean Post-Coup and Post-Dictatorship Cultural Production,” brings together the work of avant-garde Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz and that of Chilean poet and novelist Roberto Bolaño. Marinescu’s graduate studies in Spanish have included literature, the visual arts, and literary theory. As a graduate student, she taught Spanish language, literature, composition, and culture at all levels, as well as “The Art of the Film” for the screen arts and cultures department.

Jared S. Richman: Instructor of English

Richman comes to Colorado College from the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his Ph.D. in English literature in May 2009. He earned his B.A. in English literature and studio art from Union College, an M.A. in English literature and art history from the University of York, U.K., and an M.A. in British and American literature from the University of Pennsylvania. Richman’s dissertation, “‘Transatlantic Realms’: The Idea of America in British Literary Imagination,” considers America from the perspective of British authors writing from the American War of Independence to the Romantic era. At Penn, he taught in the critical writing program and offered the courses “The Romantic Period,” “To Whom It May Concern: Epistolary Forms in Literature,” “Satire in the Long Eighteenth Century,” “The Art of Satire from Horace to Doonesbury,” and “Romance and Revolution: The Epistolary Tradition.” His experience in printmaking and his interest in graphic arts create natural connections with the Cornerstone Interdisciplinary Arts Initiative and with the Press at CC.

Sanjaya Thakur: Assistant Professor of Classics

Having been appointed as a Colorado College Riley Scholar-in-Residence for the 2008-09 academic year, Thakur moves into a tenure-track position in classics. Thakur earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2008. Before that, he received an M.A. in classical art and archaeology, and another in classical studies. His interests include Latin literature, late Republican and early Imperial poetry and culture, historiography, Hellenistic poetry, Latin epigraphy, Greek and Roman topography and architecture, and Roman religion. He is currently at work on a book, “Ovid and his Emperors.” He plans to tap into the students’ latent desire to learn Latin, and his enthusiasm for the language promises to make it so.