F14B09B0-8D57-4378-B33305F17851FF48
3A8DD0FE-2447-45AC-8A1E3C1D5FC4046D

Director, Academic Technology, Teaching, and Research Services

Burke Library, First Floor
315-859-4493
nserrano@hamilton.edu

 

Nhora Serrano, Director of Academic Technology, Teaching, and Research ServicesOriginally from Colombia, Dr. Nhora Lucía Serrano is a trained Early Modern Comparative Literature scholar whose areas of focus include: Technology Enhanced Learning & Educational Innovation, Digital Humanities, History of Book History/Print Culture, Visual Studies (Graphic Narratives and Editorial Cartoons & Comics), Latin America/Latinx, and Medieval And Renaissance Studies.

In 2018 Dr. Serrano was selected to be a Mellon Press Diversity Fellow at the MIT Press/MIT. In 2017 she was selected as a 2018 Eisner Industry Awards judge. During the summer 2017, she was awarded a summer NEH Institute fellowship to participate in a 4-week seminar at the Newberry Library where she researched early 20th century Chicago Tribune cartoons. In 2014 she was awarded a Smithsonian National Postal Museum fellowship for her project on the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair postal cards and postage stamps and its relationship to editorial cartoons.

Dr. Serrano is a founding member and currently the Treasurer of the Comics Studies Society, and presently serves on the MLA Executive Forum on Book History, Print Cultures, Lexicography and is the Forum's elected Representative to the MLA Delegate Assembly. Previously, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Hamilton College, and a Visiting Scholar of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. From 2014-2018, she served on the MLA Executive Forum on Comics and Graphic Narratives.

Distinctions

International Judge (Invited)

  • Member, EMIERT Ethnic & Multicultural Information Exchange Awards Committee (ALA), 2021-23
  • GNCRT Best Graphic Novels for Children Selection Committee (ALA), 2021-22
  • Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, Comic-Con International San Diego, 2018

Fellowships and grants:

  • Next Leaders Fellowship Fellow, 2022-23
  • Leading Change Institute Fellow, Council on Library and Information Resources, 2020-21
  • Mellon Press Diversity Fellow (Info. Science, Communication, Visual Culture, Design), 2018-19
  • NEH Summer Institute Scholar: "Making Modernism: Literature and Culture in 20th Century Chicago,” Newberry Library, Chicago, IL., summer 2017
  • Smithsonian National Postal Museum and Washington 2006 World Philatelic Exhibition Scholarship for “Commemorating the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair: The Columbian Exposition and the First Souvenir Postal Cards,” spring 2014
  • Visiting Scholar of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, 2014-15

Teaching awards and grants:

  • Teaching recognition campus-wide: “Significant Impact Nomination” for Intellectual Development (Tufts Univ. first-year and sophomore survey), 2015
  • Most Valuable Professor in the College of Liberal Arts Award (Cal. State Univ., Long Beach), 2011-12

Hamilton College

  • Special Collections Grant (“Graphic Satire: Editorial Cartoons”), 2017-18
  • Special Collections Grant (“New World Printing & The Columbian Exchange”), 2016-17

Select Publications

Books & Edited Volumes:

Refereed Articles & Chapters:

  • “Casting el Inca, Garcilaso de la Vega, Comparatively Speaking.” Approaches to Teaching Inca Garcilaso de la Vega’s Royal Commentaries & Other Works, edited by Christian Fernández and José A. Mazzotti, Modern Language Association, 2022.
  • “Columbia and the Editorial Cartoon.” The Oxford Handbook of Comics Studies, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama, Oxford University Press. Print publication: September 2020; Published online: March 2019.
  • "Drawn from Clay: Mexican Cerámica, Material Culture, and Bilingual Visual Modernism in Gus Arriola's Gordo." Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society vol. 9, no. 3, 2025, pp. 251-74. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976994.
  • “Illuminating Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red and The Museum of Innocence.” MLA Approaches to Teaching Orhan Pamuk, edited by David Damrosch and Sevinç Tûrkkan, Modern Language Association, 2017, pp. 202-11.
  • "Introduction to Inked Latinidades: Latinx/e Voices and Narrativas en Viñetas." Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society 9, no. 3, 2025, pp. 229-244. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/976992.
  • “LACMA’s Gambit: In Wonderland’s Surrealist Women.” X-Tra Contemporary Art Quarterly vol. 15, no. 2, Winter 2013, pp. 102-113.
  • “Looking Back, Looking Forward: A Decade of the Comics Studies Society” co-author, with  Matthew J. Smith, Jared Gardner, Charles Hatfield, A. David Lewis, and Qiana Whitted). Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society, vol. 10, no. 1, Spring 2026, pp. 119–42. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/30/article/991720.
  • “Postcards from the Past: 1893 Chicago World Fair and Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth.” Immigrants and Comics: Graphic Spaces of Remembrance, Transaction, and Mimesis, edited by Nhora Lucía Serrano, Routledge, 2021.
  • “(Un)Tangling Arachne & the Latina Storyteller” in Gendering XXI: New Trends in Latina and Hispanic Caribbean Literatures in the 21st Century, edited by Pilar Melero and Nancy Bird-Soto, Editorial Tiempo Nuevo, 2017, pp. 151-81.
  • “Visual Frames and Breaking the Rules of the Reconquista.” Playthings in Early Modernity, edited by Allison Levy, Medieval Institute Publications, 2017, pp. 261-77.

Journal Editor:

Public Scholarship:

Courses Taught

  • Checkmate!: Play, Games & Cultural Exchanges in the Mediterranean Basin
  • Dream a Little Dream: Virtual Reality and Literature
  • Immigrants and Comics
  • Lost Civilizations: Latin America & its Literary Imagination
  • Readings in World Literature I
  • Show and Tell: Comics and Graphic Narratives
  • Visual Narratives: Images With(In) Books

Curatorial Experience

  • Curator of “Gus Arriola: Modernism and the Latino Cartoonist.” Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, The Ohio State University. 2023-24
  • Curator of “The Columbian Exchange.” Burke Library, Hamilton College. 2016-2017

Educational Background

Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison
M.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison
M.A., New York University
B.A., Amherst College

Languages

Spanish: native speaker
French: excellent
Quechua, Italian and Occitan: proficient
Portuguese, Latin (classical and medieval), Galician-Portuguese, Greek, Andalusi Arabic: reading knowledge

Service

International/National

  • 2022-present
    MLA Committee on Information Technology (Executive Council, 2022-25, Chair 2023–26)
  • 2025-present
    NERCOMP Board Member (Committees: Conference, Leadership, Vendors)
  • 2025-present
    EDUCAUSE Nominations and Leadership Development Committee
  • 2024-present
    EDUCAUSE Technology, Leadership & Culture Advisory Committee
  • 2020–2025
    Delegate Assembly Member (elected) for Book History, Print Cultures, Lexicography, Modern Language Association
  • 2019–2024
    Member (elected), MLA Executive Committee, Discussion Group on Book History, Print Cultures, Lexicography
  • 2014–present
    Founding Member and Treasurer (elected), Comics Studies Society
  • 2013–2018
    Member (elected), MLA Executive Committee, Discussion Group on Comics and Graphic Narratives

Hamilton College

  • 2026-present
    Arts & Sciences Safety Committee (ASSC)
  • 2026-present
    Curatorial Studies Committee
  • 2022-present
    Humanities Center Advisory Committee
  • 2022-present
    Faculty Committee on the Digital Arts, Ex Officio Committee Member
  • 2022-2024
    Posse Mentor, Hamilton Posse Miami 13

Co-Editor of Book Series

  • Crossing Lines: Transcultural/Transnational Comics Series, Wilfrid Laurier University Press

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contact

Research & Instructional Design Staff

Phone
315-859-4735
Webpage
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