Amy Hamilton - NMU English

M.A. & Ph.D., English Lit., University of Arizona
B.A., English & Women's Studies, Pomona College
amyhamil@nmu.edu

Amy Hamilton’s scholarly work includes essays on Indigenous American writers, U.S. Southwest border literatures, and literature and environment. Her monograph Peregrinations: Walking in American Literature was published by the University of Nevada Press in 2018. Engaging the methodologies of Material Ecocriticism, Native American Studies, and Feminist Studies, Peregrinations explores the trope and experience of walking in American texts from a cross-cultural perspective. She also co-edited a critical collection: Before the West was West: Critical Essays on Pre-1800 Literature of the American Frontiers (U of Nebraska P, 2014). This collection investigates a range of early literatures and poses new questions about “westernness” and its literary representation. Dr. Hamilton’s recent courses at NMU include Native American Oral Traditions (EN 314), Introduction to Gender and Sexuality in Literature (EN 250), American Literature II: Emergent National Voices, 1800-1865 (EN 371), and Ecocriticism and Environmental Justice (EN 595).

Dr. Hamilton is the Editor of the scholarly journal Western American Literature (WAL). Published by the Western Literature Association, WAL is the leading peer-reviewed journal in the literary and cultural study of the North American West.

• Early American literature
• Indigenous American literature
• Chicanx literature
• Western American literature
• Environmental literature and Ecocriticism
• Gender and Sexuality studies

“Colonialism and Gendered Violence in the Grassy, Bloody West.” Gender and the American West. Ed. Susan Bernardin. Routledge Press: Forthcoming.

“Luis Alberto Urrea.” The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction. Eds. Stephen Burn, Lesley Larkin, and Patrick O’Donnell. Wiley-Blackwell Press: Forthcoming.

“Imagined Deserts, Planned Communities, and Escape Pods in the American West.” Reading Aridity in Western American Literature. Eds. Jada Ach and Gary Reger. Lexington Press: 2020. 21-42

 “Climate and American Indian Literature.” Climate and American Literature. Ed. Michael Boyden. Cambridge University Press: 2020. 93-108.