Endowed Chairs in Race, Racism and Racial Justice

Bowdoin College is seeking distinguished faculty scholars to fill four newly-endowed chairs. 

The College will consider scholars and artists from across the academic spectrum whose teaching and research will address race, racism, and racial justice, with a particular focus on the challenges, histories, movements, and artistic and cultural productions of Black communities in the Americas.

These scholars can be from any discipline, but their teaching would help students better understand the challenges facing Black communities, especially those in the Americas and the US, and their presence would help shift Bowdoin in the direction of greater diversity, equity, and inclusion.


The search committee has chosen three thematic areas within the wider subject of race, racism, and racial justice.

Public Health

  • This theme invites candidates whose work explores the scientific, social, economic, or political factors that can help us better understand, assess, and improve public health. Potential candidates might consider, for example, how the recognition of racism as a public health crisis can suggest transformations in health care to eliminate disparities in rates of infant and maternal mortality, hypertension, or life expectancy, particularly for Black Americans.

Environmental Justice

  • This theme invites candidates who explore how environmental challenges might be studied, addressed, and remediated through interdisciplinary and intersectional approaches that center race, racism, and racial justice. Central to this theme is an appreciation of the asymmetrical nature of the impacts of climate change and other forms of environmental destruction, which disproportionately affects poor and Black communities who face increasing threats to housing, economic opportunity, and health.

Belonging, Citizenship, and Freedom

  • This theme invites candidates whose work helps us to better understand and intervene in the human tendency to create categories, boundaries, and hierarchies of belonging. Potential candidates might explore the myths, scientific theories, or hegemonic discourses that have determined community membership and the ways in which Black communities, in particular, are both affected by and responding to notions of belonging, citizenship, and freedom.

Find the job posting here: https://careers.bowdoin.edu/postings/10003

For questions about these new endowed chair positions, the application and cluster hiring process, or teaching at Bowdoin, please email the committee at: rrrj@bowdoin.edu

“This cluster hire should also create a true sense of community, of being in a cohort, among the folks who are coming in. They may be from different disciplines, but their research areas should overlap and speak to each other.”

—Associate Professor of Africana Studies Judith Casselberry


Search Committee Chairs:

  • Margaret BoyleAssociate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, and Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies
  • Guillermo Herrera, Professor of Economics

Search Committee Members:

  • Aretha Aoki, Associate Professor of Dance
  • Judith Casselberry, Associate Professor of Africana Studies
  • Eric Chown, Sarah and James Bowdoin Professor of Digital and Computational Studies 
  • Bruce Kohorn, Linnean Professor of Biology and Biochemistry
  • Elizabeth Pritchard, Associate Professor of Religion and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs 
  • Brian Purnell, Geoffrey Canada Associate Professor of Africana Studies and History
  • Kana Takematsu, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry
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