Scholars of Latinx politics and Islam sign on for historic cohort hire

Rachel Torres and Cyril Uy are the first scholars to join the recently announced College of Arts and Letters cohort hire. Bringing new faculty to six departments, the cohort hire will enhance the university's efforts in cultivating diversity while expanding expertise in racial and social justice, minority cultures and critical race studies.  

Torres, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Iowa, will join the political science department as an assistant professor of the politics of race and ethnicity. As a Ballard and Seashore Dissertation Fellow, Torres spent the Fall 2020 semester further developing her research on the relationship between U.S. immigration policy and the Latinx community. She has developed undergraduate coursework on immigration politics and taught on the politics of race, American politics and political communication.  

Uy, a Ph.D. candidate at Brown University, will join the philosophy and religion department as an assistant professor in the study of Islam. Uy’s research “analyzes how mystics and philosophers across the medieval Islamic world produced knowledge to negotiate identity and relationships of power.” In the 2019-2020 academic year, Uy was named the inaugural Mellon-Global Islamic Studies Teaching Fellow at Connecticut College, where he developed and taught the course “Power and Knowledge in Islam” and participated in conversations about expanding Islamic studies in humanities curricula. Uy has also taught courses on Islamic sexualities, global religions and the relationship between music and meditation. 

Additional searches for the cohort are ongoing in the Departments of Sociology and Anthropology; History; Justice Studies; and Writing, Rhetoric and Technical Communication. "We look forward to welcoming more new colleagues in the days ahead," said Dean Robert D. Aguirre.