Dr. Paul Hanstedt
Dr. Paul Hanstedt does not like literature that is all craft and no soul. This is one of the reasons he is so intrigued by Victorian authors such as George Eliot, Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
“Victorian literature has those big books that you just fall into,” Hanstedt says, “And they’re so full of emotion.”
Hanstedt is also drawn to Victorian literature because it reminds him of the time he spent in England during his junior year in undergraduate school at Luther College. He studied in Durham, England for a year and ended up staying for another year working in a bookstore.
Hanstedt did not decide that he wanted to go into teaching until his senior year in undergraduate school.
“It was then that I realized that I was more content in the classroom than anywhere else,” Hanstedt says.
Hanstedt taught his first class as a teaching assistant in graduate school, where he taught first-year writing courses. Now an associate professor, Hanstedt teaches courses in Victorian literature, creative writing, composition theory and practice and first-year writing.
Currently, Hanstedt is director of the General Education program at Roanoke College, and is waist deep in the college’s first full-fledged curricular revision in 17 years. It’s a daunting task, but Hanstedt enjoys working with other faculty to craft a more effective approach to engage students in the world of ideas.
In addition to his administrative work, Hanstedt is working on his own pieces of creative writing, including a novel, several short stories and two or three plays.
Hanstedt finds that teaching creative writing is the most challenging of all his courses.
“It is very hard to teach,” Hanstedt says, “It involves constant responding to people’s stories and it is such an emotional mine field for people.”
He is also working on an essay concerning the idea of finding a voice at a small college.
“It is difficult to get the larger academic community to listen,” Hanstedt says. “To assume that what happens at a small college is less important is simply not true. It is also not true to assume that people at smaller schools know less about teaching writing.”
One project that is allowing Hanstedt to work closely with students is editing "The Roanoke Review," a national literary magazine. Each year, he selects an editorial board consisting of four to six students to help him select the works to be included in the magazine.
“We are trying to make it into more of a book and get it more nationally know,” Hanstedt says. “It has been great working with the students on this project and I come away from our editorial board meetings feeling like we have really smart students at Roanoke College.”
Hanstedt received his Ph.D. in Victorian Literature from Ohio State University after earning his M.A. from Iowa State University in creative writing. He received his B.A. in English from Luther College.
