Amy Dunham Strand came to Aquinas in fall 2006 with long-time interdisciplinary interests
in cultural and literacy studies, environmental writing, gender, and rhetoric. She
has taught across disciplines - in the Women's and Gender Studies Program as well
as in the English Department, General Education Program, Insignis Honors Program,
Humanities, and Inquiry and Expression Program. Before coming to Grand Rapids, Dunham
Strand 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
scholarly works, Language, Gender, and Citizenship in American Literature, 1789-1919 (Routledge, 2009) and Political Prayer in Nineteenth-Century Literature: Petitioning Women (Routledge, 2024), use 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 is passionate about climate justice and
particularly proud of completing facilitator training in Climate Wayfinding with the
All We Can Save Project. She has presented on subjects ranging from the rhetoric of
women's petitioning to women's writing instruction, and has published journal and
encyclopedia articles on topics including Catharine Sedgwick's novels, the study of
American dialect, and suffrage. In her spare time, she is a student of poetry.
