Directors & Administrative Support

dlarson@hamilton.edu

Doran Larson teaches courses in prison writing, witness literatures, the history of the novel, and other subjects. He taught a creative writing course inside Attica state prison from 2006 to 2016. He has also organized two college programs inside New York State prisons. Larson’s essays on prison issues have been published in College Literature, Radical Teacher, English Language Notes, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Atlantic Monthly (online), and The Washington Post, among other venues. He is the editor of two volumes: The Beautiful Prison, a special issue of the legal-studies journal, Studies in Law, Politics, and Society; and Fourth City: Essays from the Prison in America. His book, Witness in the Era of Mass Incarceration, appeared in 2017; his current book project will appear with NYU Press. He has also published criticism on Herman Melville, Theodore Dreiser, Henry James, popular film, as well as two novels, a novella, over a dozen short stories.

Clara Cho plans to be a history major, and loves playing ultimate frisbee with the Hamilton Hot Saucers team. She joined DHi as a freshman, and is currently working with the American Prison Writing Archive. In her downtime, Clara enjoys reading, baking, and running.

Will Rasenberger is a philosophy major and government minor whose interests include identity formation, political theory, and the theory behind just public policy. In addition to his work with the DHi, he is treasurer of the Hamilton College Law Society, and a tutor with Hamilton Reads. His long time interest in social justice and especially hearing the voice of historically silenced groups has led him to collaborate with Professor Larson on his American Prison Writing Archive project. Will is responsible, along with student interns, for selecting essays to be archived, collecting metadata about these essays, and transcribing them. Will hopes to gain valuable knowledge of data accumulation and how to leverage data — and digital humanities in general — to pursue worthy social justice objectives.

Shirley Luo majored in public policy and minored in environmental studies and jurisprudence, law and justice studies. She joined the DHi team to read and process essay submissions for the American Prison Writing Archive.

Allie Goodman majored in American Studies with a minor in sociology and cinema and new media studies.

Mary Lehner ’12 majored in environmental studies, with minors in physics and math. Her interests are broad ranging and encompass digital and performance art in addition to science. In Hamilton’s Digital Humanities Initiative, Mary’s research interests and programming skills combine to assist on the DuraCloud pilot project and digital media research approaches. She consulted with ITS and the library in development and testing of cloud storage solutions for DHi faculty research collections and researching applications of mobile devices in field work.