Stephen Boyd Hequembourg and Susan Johnson-Roehr, recent recipients of the American Council of Learned Societies New Faculty Fellowships, will begin teaching at the University of Virginia in the fall.

Hequembourg will join the College of Arts & Sciences’ English department as an assistant professor. He received his Ph.D. in English from Harvard University. His dissertation, “Monism and Metaphor: The Rhetoric of Early Modern Materialism,” examines the writings and philosophies of Thomas Hobbes, John Milton and Henry Cavendish.

Johnson-Roehr will serve as an assistant professor of art in the College of Arts & Sciences. She received her Ph.D. in art from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her dissertation, “The Spatialization of Knowledge and Power at the Astronomical Observations of Sawai Jai Singh II,” explores the movement of scientific enterprise between intellectual centers of India, France, Portugal and China.

The American Council of Learned Societies New Faculty Fellows Programs “allows recent Ph.D.s in the humanities to take up two-year positions at universities and colleges across the United States where their particular research and teaching expertise augment departmental offerings,” according to the council’s website. This fellowship was established with the financial support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in an effort to ease the transition of recent Ph.D.s in the humanities into an increasingly difficult job market.

— By Dana Cypress