John T. Hamilton

John T. Hamilton is the William R. Kenan Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, serving as Director of Graduate Studies. He is currently on leave for the 2023-24 academic year. His academic journey includes studies in Comparative Literature, German, and Classics at institutions in New York, Paris, and Heidelberg. Prior to Harvard, he taught at New York University and held visiting professorships in Classics at the University of California-Santa Cruz and Bristol University’s Institute of Greece, Rome, and the Classical Tradition. His research focuses on 18th- and 19th-century literature, classical philology, music and literature, and political metaphorology. Hamilton has been actively involved with the Leibniz-Kreis, a working group focused on the reception of antiquity, since 1995. He has held fellowships at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and the Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung in Berlin. His notable publications include Music, Madness, and the Unworking of Language (2008), Philology of the Flesh (2018), and Complacency: Classics and Its Displacement in Higher Education (2022). Hamilton also serves as an editor for the “Manhattan Manuscripts” series published in Germany. His work bridges literary analysis, philosophical inquiry, and the interplay between classical traditions and modern thought.