Three faculty members receive tenure
Faculty members in the fields of art, psychology and the study of American and African American culture have been awarded tenure at Bates College.
The three tenure recipients are assistant professor Pamela Johnson of the Department of Art and Visual Culture; associate professor John McClendon of the programs in African American studies and American cultural studies; and assistant professor Michael Sargent of the Department of Psychology.
All three live in Lewiston and have taught at Bates since 1999.
Johnson teaches studio art media and techniques. A painter and printmaker, she has recently completed a body of more than 50 mixed-media pieces that use images from fairy tales and nature to explore themes of female identity. She has shown work in solo and group exhibitions at Maine venues including the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, in Rockport, and Zero Station, Portland, as well as the Bates College Museum of Art. Her work has appeared at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo., Bennington College, Vermont, and Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, Mass.
Johnson received a B.F.A. in art history at the University of Kansas, a second B.F.A. in painting at the Kansas City (Missouri) Art Institute, and her master’s at Bennington College. In 1993 and 1994, she worked as a personal assistant to Helen Frankenthaler, the noted Abstract Expressionist painter. Johnson also studied at Maine’s Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
McClendon teaches courses in cultural politics, African American philosophers, Africana thought and practice, theory and method in African American studies, and the role of athletics in African American culture. He is interested in the intersections of philosophy, social science and the African American experience, and particularly in African American expressions and adaptations of leftist thought.
McClendon is a widely sought-after public speaker and a prolific author. He has written diverse articles for scholarly journals, reference works and anthologies, served on the advisory board of the journal Cultural Logic, and served as editor of the American Philosophical Association’s Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience. His book C.L.R. James’s Notes On Dialectics: Left Hegelianism or Marxism-Leninism? was published by Lexington Books in January, and he has three other book manuscripts in progress.
Before Bates, McClendon taught in public schools and in academic settings including the University of Missouri and the University of Illinois at Champaign. He received a B.S. in black studies and political science at Central State University in Ohio, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Kansas.
Sargent teaches courses in social and political psychology, research methodology, prejudice and stereotyping, and social cognition. Most of his research focuses on stereotyping and prejudice.
Sargent has written and spoken extensively on the Implicit Association Test, an instrument for measuring attitudes and responses that individuals are either incapable of recognizing in themselves or unwilling to report honestly. He has also written and spoken on issues of race in police work and the legal system.
Before Bates, he taught at the Ohio State University. Sargent received his B.A. in psychology at Hendrix College in Arkansas, and his M.A. and Ph.D. at Ohio State.
