Rate My Professor Margaret Thickstun

Margaret Thickstun serves as the Jane D. and Ellis E. Bradford ’45 Distinguished Writing Chair in the Literature and Creative Writing Department at Hamilton College, where she joined the faculty in 1988. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. from Cornell University—her doctoral dissertation, Fictions of the Feminine: Puritan Doctrine and the Representation of Women, was published as a book by Cornell University Press in 1988—and her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College. Thickstun's research specializations include religious literature and the history of the book, with a focus on literary reception, the transition from manuscript to print culture, books as physical objects, the place of women writers, the making of anthologies, and canon formation. Her academic interests center on John Milton, John Bunyan, Jonathan Swift, and Puritan women's spirituality. Key publications encompass her books Milton’s Paradise Lost: Moral Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and Fictions of the Feminine: Puritan Doctrine and the Representation of Women (Cornell University Press, 1988). She edited Anne Bradstreet: Poems and Meditations (Iter Press, 2019) and co-edited Witness, Warning, and Prophecy: Quaker Women's Writing, 1655-1700 with Teresa Feroli (Iter Press, 2018). Selected articles include “The Pilgrim’s Progress, Part II” in The Oxford Handbook of John Bunyan (Oxford University Press, 2018), “Contextualizing Anne Bradstreet’s Literary Remains: Why we need a new edition of the poems” in Early American Literature 52:2 (2017), “Fame, Shame, and the Importance of Community in Samson Agonistes” in Milton’s Rival Hermeneutics (Duquesne University Press, 2012), “Resisting Patience in Milton’s Sonnet 19, ‘When I Consider’” in Milton Quarterly 44.3 (2010), and “Milton among Puritan Women: Affiliative Spirituality and the Conclusion of Paradise Lost” in Religion and Literature 36.2 (2004).

Thickstun has held prominent leadership roles at Hamilton College, serving as Chair of the Literature and Creative Writing Department from 2015-2019 and 2023-2025, Faculty Chair from 2020-2022, and College Marshal from 2008-2023. Additional service includes the Writing Advisory Committee (2011-2014, AY 2015-16, 2022-present), Committee on Appointments (2002-03, 2007-08, 2009-10), Committee on Budget and Finance (2000-01, 2006-07). Her courses taught include Interpretation and Self-Knowledge, The Experience of Reading, Paradise Lost in Context, Poetry and Poetics, and Introduction to History of the Book.