Rate My Professor Nicholas Hoffman

Nicholas Hoffman is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University at Buffalo, where he also serves as Associate Director of the Academic and Professional Writing Program since 2019. His research interests include technical and professional writing, social justice pedagogies, information technology, early modern literature, digital humanities, digital pedagogy, news, blended and online learning, media theory, and book history. Hoffman earned his Ph.D. in English Literature from the University at Buffalo in 2016, with a dissertation titled “The Art of Information Management: English Literature 1580-1605.” He holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from Miami University (Ohio) in 2005 and a B.A. in Political Science and Creative Writing from Ashland University in 2003.

Hoffman's career at the University at Buffalo includes positions as Graduate Teaching Assistant (2008-2013), Adjunct Instructor (2013-2014), and progression to his current faculty role since 2017, alongside lectureships at Buffalo State College (2014-2015) and the University of Maryland, College Park Professional Writing Program (2016-2017). He has been honored with the Humanities Institute Advanced PhD Fellowship (2013-2014), College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Fellowship (2014-2015), National Endowment for the Humanities Early Modern Digital Agendas Seminar and Institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library (2013 and 2016), Graduate Excellence in Teaching Award (2013), and Presidential Fellowship (2008-2012). Key scholarly activities encompass presentations such as “First-Year Composition on Discord” at the Conference on College Composition and Communication (2019), “Quantitative Spenser: Counting Martial Encounters and Violence in The Faerie Queene” at the International Spenser Society Conference (2015), and manuscript preparation for Political Theology and Early Modernity (University of Chicago Press, 2012). Hoffman has impacted teaching and curriculum by developing online first-year composition courses, mentoring graduate instructors, leading workshops on digital tools and teaching revision, and contributing to committees on composition, clinical faculty policies, and the future of writing.