Carter Hanson

BIOGRAPHY

Carter Hanson joined the Valparaiso English Department in 1999.  From 2005 to 2007 he served as the Resident Director of VU’s international study center in Cambridge, England, and in 2010 he directed VU’s study abroad program in Hangzhou, China.  Professor Hanson also directed VU’s study abroad program in Reutlingen, Germany, from 2015-2017.

Professor Hanson teaches courses on the English Novel and Nineteenth-Century British literature, Young Adult literature, Utopian and Dystopian literature, Canadian fiction, and Children’s literature.  He also enjoys teaching general education classes such as Core and the Christ College First-Year Program.  In addition to these literary topics, Professor Hanson occasionally teaches a course on the history of electronic dance music.  In the classroom, Professor Hanson tries to help students fully explore texts through discussion, as well as to establish the important connections between texts, history and culture.  Some of his favorite books are The Giver by Lois Lowry, Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, and Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne.

Professor Hanson’s main areas of research expertise are in the fields of Utopian Studies, Nineteenth-Century English literature, Canadian literature.  He co-founded the Midwest Conference on Utopian Studies, which was held at VU in 2012 and 2015.  He has also been named the University Research Professor twice, in 2005 and 2014.

Professor Hanson’s interest in Canadian literature began when he started researching the history and literature of nineteenth-century English emigration to Canada.  He has published articles on this topic in journals like Canadian Literature and The American Review of Canadian Studies, and his book Emigration, Nation, Vocation: The Literature of English Emigration to Canada, 1825-1900 was published in 2009 by Michigan State University Press.

On Utopian/Dystopian literature, he has published articles on Lois Lowry’s TheGiver in Extrapolation, Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Dispossessed in Science FictionStudies, M.T. Anderson’s Feed in Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time in Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory, and on utopianism in electronic dance music in Utopian Studies.  His book Memory and Utopian Agency in Utopian/Dystopian Literature: Memory of the Future was published in 2020 by Routledge.

Along with his wife Michelle, Carter spends much of his free time parenting two daughters.  His extracurricular passions include dance/electro/pop music and nearly anything related to Star Wars.

Professor Hanson’s undergraduate degree was from Luther College, and he earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Iowa.

EDUCATION

Ph.D.– University of Iowa

M.A.–University of Iowa

B.A.–Luther College