Amy Dunham Strand came to Aquinas in fall 2006 with long-time interests in gender
and women's studies. She has taught across disciplines at Aquinas since fall 2006
- in the Women's Studies Program, where she has developed special topics courses on
Women and the Environment and Women's Political Writings in the U.S., as well as in
the English Department, Insignis Honors Program, Humanities, and Inquiry and Expression
Program. She has also taught in the University of Cincinnati's Honors Scholars Program
and at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she received her M.A. and Ph.D.
in 19th- and 20th-century American literature and composition and rhetoric. Dunham
Strand's book, Language, Gender, and Citizenship in American Literature, 1789-1919 (Routledge, 2009), uses an interdisciplinary, historical approach to explore intersecting
ideas about language, gender, and citizenship in American literature and culture,
mirroring her interest in linking the study of language, literature, and culture in
the classroom. Dunham Strand's further pedagogical interests in service learning and
community engagement can be traced to her undergraduate years at Wittenberg University,
where she received her B.A. in English. She has presented on subjects ranging from
the rhetoric of women's petitioning in the U.S. to women's writing instruction in
American settlement houses, and she has published articles on topics ranging from
Catharine Sedgwick's novel Hope Leslie to the study of American dialect.
