Amy E. Hungerford

Sen. Amy Hungerford, the Ruth Fulton Benedict Professor of English and Comparative Literature, is Dean and Executive Vice President of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In that role she is responsible, among other things, for nurturing the excellence of the faculty who teach undergraduate and graduate students, and for ensuring Columbia’s standing as a great research university across the arts, humanities, social sciences, and sciences. 

A scholar of 20th and 21st century American literature, Professor Hungerford’s first two monographs explore literary engagements with genocide and with religion in the 20th century. Her most recent book, Making Literature Now, examines how social networks—both virtual and traditional—shape contemporary writers’ creative choices and the choices we make about reading. Her current research and writing is about the sociable qualities of solitude. 

As a devoted teacher and graduate mentor, Professor Hungerford trained a generation of Ph.D. and master’s degree students who now work in higher education, high school teaching, and publishing. Her open-access online course, “The American Novel Since 1945” has been enjoyed by learners around the world since it was recorded in 2008. She teaches regularly in the Core Curriculum. 

Dean Hungerford joined Columbia as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in January of 2020 after twenty years at Yale, where she served in various roles, including Head of an undergraduate residential college and Dean of Humanities.