Four professors in the College of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt University were approved for tenure effective the fall 2008 semester.

Tracy G. Miller in history of art, Emanuelle K.F. Oliveira in Spanish and Portuguese and Keivan G. Stassun and Julia A. Velkovska of physics and astronomy have all been awarded the title of associate professor.

Miller is the author of The Divine Nature of Power: Chinese Ritual Architecture at the Sacred Site of Jinci. She teaches the history of art and architecture in East Asia, with a special emphasis on the culture of ritual sites in China 618-1644 C.E.

Oliveira teaches courses on Brazilian culture and literature and also researches Brazilian cinema. She has published one book on Afro-Brazilian literature and is working on a second, The Color of Crime: Delinquency and Representations of Race in Brazilian Literature and Cinema.

Stassun is director of the Fisk-Vanderbilt Master’s-to-Ph.D. Bridge program, which helps minority students in the sciences earn a master’s degree in physics at Fisk and then a Ph.D. in a related science at Vanderbilt. He was named a Cottrell Scholar in 2006, identifying him as a researcher expected to make significant contributions to teaching.

Velkovska researches experimental relativistic heavy ion physics and teaches courses in thermal, particle and quantum physics.


Contact: Jim Patterson, (615) 322-NEWS
jim.patterson@vanderbilt.edu