Brentney Hamilton
Lecturer
Education
Ph.D., Texas Woman’s University; Rhetoric and Composition; in-progressM.T.S., Harvard Divinity School; Religion, Ethics and Politics; 2009
B.A., Southern Methodist University; English with a Specialization in Creative Writing; 2007
BW Hamilton has a special affinity for first-year students at SMU, probably because she vividly remembers what it felt like to be one. She graduated with a BA in English from SMU (2007), and during her tenure as a Mustang, she won the Margaret Terry Crooks Award and the Lon Tinkle Scholarship while studying under the mentorship of remarkable scholars she now humbly calls colleagues, mentors, and friends. She has been twice nominated for the HOPE Teaching Award (2020, 2023), and because those nominations are submitted by students, they are her most cherished professional achievements to date.
The next step in her educational career was an MTS from Harvard Divinity School (2009), where she developed dueling obsessions with American Pragmatism and Transcendentalism. In the ensuing decade, she worked as a reporter for The Dallas Morning News and was granted a Barbara Jordan Media Awardfor Outstanding Presentation of Individuals with Disabilities from the Office of the Texas Governor (2018). A year later, she was invited back to her first intellectual home, SMU, to teach first-year writing and critical reasoning.
Currently, she dedicates every free moment toward an in-progress PhD in Rhetoric and Composition at Texas Woman’s University, where her scholarship focuses on Rural and Working Class Rhetorics, American Transcendentalism, and Composition Pedagogy.
Areas of Interest:
Rural and Working Class Rhetorics
American Transcendentalism
Composition Pedagogy
Honors and publications:
Courses Taught:
