PERSON: Aaron Hanlon

Colby College

Assistant Professor of English

Aaron Hanlon is an Assistant Professor of English at Colby College, having taught previously in the English Department at Georgetown University for three years. He is also an advisor and former Lab Director for Georgetown’s Connected Academics project (P.I. Kathryn Temple), a joint MLA/Mellon Foundation grant to explore broader doctoral training and career options for humanities graduate students.

Aaron specializes in 18th-century British and transatlantic literatures, as well as literature and culture of the Enlightenment, with particular interests in epistemology, science writing, theories of exceptionalism, satire, fictionality, and the novel.

Along with his academic work, he writes national media essays about politics, teaching, and higher education, with bylines at The New York Times, The New Republic, The Atlantic, Salon, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Huffington Post, Alternet, and MSN, and others. He also writes “Exegetic Rap Blog,” which features playful analyses of rap music as instructive models for literary criticism and interpretation.

He completed his doctorate in English at the University of Oxford in 2012, and holds prior degrees from Bucknell University and Dartmouth College.

— aaronrhanlon.com