Dr. Amy Hungerford

Biography

Amy Hungerford is the Ruth Fulton Benedict Professor of English and Comparative Literature and currently serves as the Executive Vice President and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University. She is a scholar of American literature, with her monographs exploring literary engagements with genocide and religion in the 20th century. Her recent book, 'Making Literature,' examines how social networks—both virtual and traditional—shape contemporary writers' creative choices and the choices readers make. Her current research focuses on the sociable qualities of solitude. Hungerford is also the co-editor of a post-1945 volume of the Norton Anthology of American Literature, which serves as a central text in many courses across the country, and she has created a popular free online course titled 'The American Novel 1945,' which has garnered international participation. In the early 2000s, she was part of the founding collective Post45, a professional association of scholars working on post-45 literary and cultural studies, and co-founded the open-access journal post45.org, which publishes peer-reviewed general interest work in this field. Throughout her career, she has mentored a generation of scholars in 20th and 21st century American literature, contributing to higher education, publishing, and secondary school teaching in both the U.S. and the U.K. Prior to her two decades at Columbia, Hungerford was a faculty member at Yale University, where she served as the head of a residential college and was the Bird White Housum Professor of English and Dean of Humanities, overseeing significant hiring and planning for the renovated Humanities building on campus.

Research Interests