Gretchen Long, the Frederick Rudolph ’42 – Class of 1965 Professor of American Culture at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, will serve as the next dean of the college. Professor Long joined the department of history at Williams College in 2003. She served as chair of Africana studies at Williams from 2012 to 2014 and also has served on the advisory committee of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program.
A historian and scholar of race and medicine, Dr. Long is the author of Doctoring Freedom: The Politics of African American Medical Care in Slavery and Emancipation (University of North Carolina Press, 2012).
Dr. Long is a graduate of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. She holds a master’s degree in history and a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Chicago.
Margaret Vendryes has been appointed dean of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, effective June 1. Dr. Vendryes is joining Tufts from York College of the City University of New York, where she is a professor, director of the Fine Arts Gallery, and chair of the department of performing and fine arts. Professor Vendryes is the author of Barthé: A Life in Sculpture (University Press of Mississippi, 2008).
“I’m hoping that I can be the face of change,” Dr. Vendryes said, “and that I can be the one that shows that the school is entering a new era and that there is something new to learn about what the school is doing and why it is doing it. As a Black, queer practicing artist, historian, and curator, I openly represent, and advocate for, these groups and professions. But my work also encompasses the full spectrum of the visual arts and all who claim a place within them.”
Dr. Vendryes is a graduate of Amherst College in Massachusetts. She earned a master’s degree in art history at Tulane University in New Orleans and a Ph.D. at Princeton University in New Jersey.
