Contact Michele
Michele Hardesty
413.549.4600
On sabbatical spring 2026.
Michele Hardesty
Associate Professor of U.S. Literatures and Cultural Studies
Michele Hardesty received her M.A. and Ph.D. in English and comparative literature from Columbia University, and her B.A in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Professor Hardesty’s courses explore the multiple literary cultures of the United States, in national and transnational frameworks. She teaches that any reckoning with the literary history of the U.S. must include not only the canonized genres of novel, short story, and poetry, but also oral forms such as storytelling and slam poetry, and popular forms such as science fiction and comics. Studying these different forms requires students to pay attention to their distinct contexts of emergence, modes of circulation, and measures of value. Understanding context also means understanding power, and Hardesty’s courses explore how texts and canons have both shaped and contested dominant formations of power along the lines of nation, gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality.
Hardesty’s research focuses on the crosscurrents of social movements and literary cultures during the Cold War era, with a focus on the cultural politics of international solidarity. She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Writers Take Sides: Internationalism and U.S. Literatures, 1959-86. Her essay “Looking for the Good Fight: William T. Vollmann Comes of Age in Afghanistan” was published in the journal boundary 2 in 2009, and her essay “If All the Writers of the World Get Together: Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and a Writers’ International in Sandinista Nicaragua” appears in the edited volume Transnational Beat Generation (Palgrave, 2012), edited by Nancy Grace and Jenny Skerl. In addition, Hardesty’s work has appeared in Critical Quarterly and The Monthly Review, and in the historical comics encyclopedia Comics Through Time: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas, edited by M. Keith Booker.
Hardesty is also working with Hampshire digital pedagogy librarian Alana Kumbier and Mount Holyoke archivist Leslie Fields on a project called “Zine Scenes,” supported by a Mellon-funded Five Colleges Digital Humanities project development grant. The goal of this project is to create an ongoing archival research initiative in which students, faculty, and library staff will examine queer and feminist zines from the 1990s within the countercultural contexts in which they were produced and circulated. This initiative will develop digital tools (games, mapping, timelines) to publish research findings on a dedicated website hosted by Five Colleges, Inc. A major part of this project is a Five College archival research seminar called “Beyond the Riot: Feminist and Queer Zine Histories,” hosted by Hampshire College.
Professor Hardesty has been a member of the Hampshire in Havana program since 2012, and was Faculty-in-Residence in Havana for the spring 2015 semester. Find more information on the program.
Recent and Upcoming Courses
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This course will examine how the novel has shaped-and contested-the notion of the United States as an empire from the late 19th century to the early 21st, while also complicating the notion of a nationally bound American literary canon. Most of the course will focus on three novels, each of which represents (and to some extent critiques) U.S. economic and military imperialism in the 20th century: Rachel Kushner's Telex from Cuba (2008), Abdelrahman Munif's Cities of Salt (1984), and Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer (2015). These realist novels inhabit quite different points of view, and each one deals in complex ways with the lived experience of empire and resistance: Telex from Cuba narrates the coming of the Cuban Revolution from the point of view of white women and children living in the US commercial colonies in eastern Cuba in the 1950s, as well as Cubans of many stripes; Cities of Salt narrates the arrival of American oil business in the Arabian Peninsula in the 1930s from the perspective of displaced and transformed Arab communities; and The Sympathizer narrates the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam in the 1970s from the perspective of a Vietnamese Communist double agent exiled to California. To enhance our understanding, we will closely read these novels next to primary sources and critical work from the fields of history, American Studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and literary studies. Students will write frequent critical response papers, co-facilitate discussion, and undertake an independent research essay that will include a proposal, draft, and revision. This course is best suited for students with some college-level background in U.S. literature, history, and/or cultural studies. Keywords:America empire imperialism novel Cuba Vietnam Saudi Arabia
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The Hampshire College Zine Collection (HCZC) is a non-circulating library of over 1,000 zines. It was created by student zinemakers in the 1990s. In the late 2000s, the Zine Collective, a student group, reorganized and enlarged the collection, moving it to the Harold F. Johnson Library. Now, in the 2020s, the collection has been recategorized and expanded by a new generation of students, librarians, archivists, and professors. In this practicum and research workshop, students will study the politics and ethics of zine librarianship, while learning practical (if unconventional) skills of zine cataloging. Together, we will participate in an ongoing audit of the HCZC and make recommendations for its ongoing growth and stewardship. Additionally, each student will conduct an individual exploratory research study in the collection, aided by the lenses of critical archives and librarianship studies. The end product of this research will be a collaborative zine of the students' design. This course is best suited to Division I and early Division II students.
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This course invites a series of guests to speak on topics related to contemporary Cuban culture and society, including US-Cuba relations; Cuban literature, theater, music, cinema, and visual art; racial dynamics; and gender and sexuality. Guest lecturers will teach primarily in Spanish, with translation when necessary. Past guest lecturers have included Rafael Rodriguez Beltran on Alejo Carpentier and contemporary Cuban literature, Zuleica Romay on race in Cuba, and Graciela Chailloux on US-Cuba relations. Between these lectures, students will complete readings, attend concerts and screenings, and visit museums related to the week's lecture; they will write weekly responses; and they will develop one response paper into a longer, formal essay. Classes will be taught in simple academic Spanish and English; students will be free to ask questions, make comments, and write in either language. Students are expected to spend 6-8 hours per week outside class completing readings and viewings, attending concerts and art exhibitions, and/or completing writing assignments for this course.
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As the ability to communicate depends largely on a good understanding of the culture, this Spanish course attempts to enhance students' understanding, respect, and appreciation for the rich traditions and customs of Cuba. The course seeks to build students' colloquial language use, strengthening their ability to converse in daily life and on topics of interest such as social life, family, culture, art, race, gender, etc. Spanish instruction in Cuba relies on a combination of structured class time and daily informal exchange at the students' homestays. This combination provides the kinds of real-life situations that will permit students to expand their vocabulary and practice grammar studied in class, and to develop comfort speaking the Spanish language. Students will be placed in specific classes according to their incoming level of Spanish; students with advanced levels or fluency will propose a language-related semester-long project commensurate to their ability. In class, students will focus on analyzing texts and film/video, building vocabulary, and engaging in conversation and discussion in Spanish on various topics. Students will occasionally visit museums, cultural sites, and performances; they will interact with invited speakers; and they will conduct small research projects on cultural and social topics.
