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About the Majors

At Hamilton, students may choose to major in literature or creative writing. In either case, their professors will encourage them to explore literature across centuries, nations, and languages. Consulting with advisors, literature majors develop an individualized, and potentially interdisciplinary, course of study. Creative writing majors take courses that balance literary study with poetry and prose workshops. In both majors, the curriculum emphasizes small classes, the exchange and testing of ideas, and the development of superior reading and writing skills.

Literature Students Will Learn to:

  • Write clear and well supported arguments about literary and/or other cultural texts
  • Demonstrate knowledge of diverse literary traditions across historical periods, geographic regions, and/or social contexts
  • Analyze literary works compellingly in contexts informed by literary criticism and/or broader regions, and/or social contexts

Creative Writing Students Will Learn to:

  • Write with an awareness of the literary traditions within which they are working
  • Write with attentiveness to form and genre
  • Write a sustained creative project that demonstrates originality and attention to language

A Sampling of Courses

Hamilton College cemetery

American Ghosts

Why do we tell ghost stories, and what role do ghosts play in American history and literature? This course will explore the ghost narrative in short fiction, novels and film. We will examine what ghosts express in U.S. literature and culture, how they unearth our understanding of American history, and how ghost stories intersect with gender, race, sexuality and class. We will read works by Shirley Jackson, Toni Morrison, Carmen Maria Machado, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Jesmyn Ward and Louise Erdrich, among others. Students will engage in close reading and textual analysis and will write four full-length essays. 

Explore these select courses:

Always a necessity and sometimes a luxury, food connects all people to the planet and to one another. This course will explore how authors and filmmakers use food and cooking in their works as a means of exposing complex social relationships, histories, and identities. The list of authors we may read includes Laura Esquivel, Aimee Bender, Isak Dinesen, Franz Kafka, MFK Fisher, Ruth Reichl, and many poets. We will also look at films such as Big Night; Eat, Drink, Man, Woman; and Ratatouille.

"Know thyself." Young people struggled with this injunction long before Hamilton adopted the motto. This course explores how young people in literature—from medieval tales of adventure through 21st c. graphic novels—attempt to define their own identity in relation to their families and societies. We’ll explore how intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and culture come together in the construction of identity. Texts may include anonymous medieval works, as well as novels by Jane Austen, Alison Bechdel, Charles Dickens, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Art Spiegelman.

Debates about the value of literature have long been tied to questions about its use. Literature has been praised—and condemned—as a source of pleasure, a medium for the transmission of knowledge, and a vehicle of personal expression. In order to determine why fiction matters, we will examine works that explore the power of literature to shape moral, social, and political realities, including philosophical manifestos, anti-slavery treatises, self-help manuals, and experimental novels. Works by Rousseau, Cugoano, Wollstonecraft, and George Eliot, as well as the film The Servant (1963).

A creative non-fiction workshop in which students will read and discuss essays in some of the following sub-genres: memoir, travel/nature writing, food-writing, and literary journalism by a wide range of authors. Readings will provide models for student work as well as contexts in which to examine the work students generate. Part of our task will be to answer the question: What is creative non-fiction? Through a close examination of the texts we read in class, and the process of both writing and critiquing student essays, we will attempt to clarify the sometimes vague definitions of the genre.

Poetry in the early modern era circulated in manuscript in particular controlled social contexts. How did poems survive, get into print? What is the difference between reading a poem in manuscript, in a collection, in an anthology? Attention to manuscript circulation, common-place books, and miscellanies, and the role of anthologies in canon formation after. Case studies: the Devonshire manuscript, Sidney and Shakespeare sonnet sequences, collections by Anne Bradstreet, Katherine Philips, and Edward Taylor, among others. Later examples, such as Dickinson, according to student interest.

Meet Our Faculty

Margaret Thickstun

Chair, Jane Watson Irwin Professor of Literature

mthickst@hamilton.edu

literature in 17th-century England and Colonial America, particularly by women and by people writing on religious subjects

Anne Valente

Associate Professor of Literature and Creative Writing, Director of Creative Writing

avalente@hamilton.edu

creative writing, novels and short stories, creative non-fiction, and 20th century American literature

Stephanie Bahr

Assistant Professor of Literature, Director of Medieval and Renaissance Studies

sbahr@hamilton.edu

Patrick Caoile

Visiting Assistant Professor of Literature and Creative Writing

pcaoile@hamilton.edu

Creative writing, Asian American literature and media, Filipino American literature, the Gothic, pop culture

Naomi Guttman

Jane D. and Ellis E. Bradford ’45 Distinguished Writing Chair

nguttman@hamilton.edu

poetry and poetics; food writing; contemplative pedagogy; environmental and feminist literary study

Tina May Hall

Associate Dean of Faculty and Professor of Literature and Creative Writing

thall@hamilton.edu

creative writing, 20th-century literature, experimental women's writing, and postmodern gothic

Doran Larson

Edward North Chair of Greek and Greek Literature and Professor of Literature and Creative Writing

dlarson@hamilton.edu

20th-century American literature; the history of the Anglo-American novel; fiction writing; nonfiction writing and prison writing of the U.S., South Africa, and Ireland

Jane Robbins Mize

Visiting Assistant Professor of Literature and Creative Writing

jmize@hamilton.edu

Native American and Indigenous Studies, environmental humanities, twentieth- and twenty-first-century North American literature, poetry and poetics, media studies

Hoa Ngo

Visiting Assistant Professor of Literature and Creative Writing

hngo@hamilton.edu

Vincent Odamtten

William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Literature and Africana Studies

vodamtte@hamilton.edu

African literature with a focus of Ghanaian and women's literature; 20th-century Caribbean literature; African-American literature; science fiction; literary criticism; use of digital technology in the study of literature

Onno Oerlemans

Elizabeth J. McCormack Professor of Literature

ooerlema@hamilton.edu

Romantic period literature; animals in literature; animal rights; nature writing – literature and environmentalism; cultural and political history of the Adirondack Park

Jane Springer

James L. Ferguson Professor of Literature and Creative Writing

jspringe@hamilton.edu

poems, poetics, nonfiction and Southern literature

Pavitra Sundar

Associate Professor of Literature

psundar@hamilton.edu

cultural politics of voice; postcolonial studies; sound studies; South Asian film and media studies; feminist theory, especially women-of-color and transnational feminisms

Suzanne Taylor

Assistant Professor of Literature

sxtaylor@hamilton.edu

Katherine Terrell

Associate Chair, Professor of Literature

kterrell@hamilton.edu

Old English, Middle English, and Middle Scots language and literature

Benjamin Widiss

Associate Professor of Literature

bwidiss@hamilton.edu

20th-century and contemporary American literature, literary theory, autobiography, film

Steven Yao

Edmund A. LeFevre Professor of English

syao@hamilton.edu

20th-century American and British literature; literary translation; Ezra Pound; comparative literature; Asian American literature, especially poetry; global literary modernisms; Asian diasoporas; transpacific literature

Christian Goodwillie

Lecturer in History, Lecturer in Literature and Creative Writing

cgoodwil@hamilton.edu

Thomas Knauer

Lecturer in Literature and Creative Writing

tknauer@hamilton.edu

Phil Memmer

Lecturer in Literature and Creative Writing

pmemmer@hamilton.edu

Nhora Lucía Serrano

Lecturer in Literature and Creative Writing

nserrano@hamilton.edu

Technology Enhanced Learning & Educational Innovation, Digital Humanities, History of Book History/Print Culture, Visual Studies (Graphic Narratives and Editorial Cartoons & Comics), Latin America/Latinx, and Medieval And Renaissance Studies

Careers After Hamilton

Hamilton graduates who concentrated in literature and creative writing are pursuing careers in a variety of fields, including:

  • Director, Electronic Publishing, Scientific American
  • Executive Editor, Whole Living magazine
  • Chief Development Officer, Norman Rockwell Museum
  • President, Scholastic Media
  • Magistrate, Connecticut State Superior Court
  • Composer/Music Publisher, Ceili Rain
  • Financial Advisor, Ameriprise Financial Services
  • Physician, Senior Deputy Editor, Annals of Internal Medicine
  • Communications Manager, IBM

Explore Hamilton Stories

Emma Kerkman ’25

Kerkman ’25 Wins Dell Award; Story to be Published

Emma Kerkman ’25 has been selected as the winner of the Dell Award, formerly the Isaac Asimov Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing for her story, “Lolo’s Last Run.”

Doran Larson

Larson Publishes New Book on American Prison System

"Inside Knowledge: Incarcerated People on the Failures of the American Prison," by Doran Larson, the Edward North Chair of Greek and Greek Literature and Professor of Literature and Creative Writing, was published this week by NYU Press.

Zoe Neely '25 at NBC NYC

Interning at NBCUniversal

Zoe Neely ’25 has long dabbled in social media, all the while considering a shift into marketing. When the right opportunity finally presented itself, she took full advantage. This summer she is a marketing intern on the syndication team at NBC.

Contact

Department Name

Literature and Creative Writing Department

Contact Name

Margie Thickstun

Office Location
198 College Hill Road
Clinton, NY 13323

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