Andrew Delbanco

Andrew Delbanco is the Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies and Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1985. He earned his A.B. from Harvard University in 1973, A.M. in 1976, and Ph.D. in 1980. Delbanco's research interests encompass American literature from the colonial period through the nineteenth century, religion, pedagogy, nineteenth-century studies, and American and the Americas. He serves as president of the Teagle Foundation since July 1, 2018, having joined its board in 2009, and was president of the Society of American Historians from 2021 to 2022. He is a trustee of the Library of America and trustee emeritus of the National Humanities Center, with prior service on the boards of the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the PEN American Center.

A distinguished scholar in Literature, Delbanco is the author of several influential books, including The Puritan Ordeal (1989), The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil (1995), Required Reading: Why Our American Classics Matter Now (1997), The Real American Dream (1999), Melville: His World and Work (2005)—finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography—The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War (2018)—a New York Times notable book that received the Anisfield-Wolf Prize, Lionel Trilling Award, and Mark Lynton History Prize—and College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be (Princeton University Press, 2012; second edition 2023). His essays on American literary and religious history and higher education appear regularly in The New York Review of Books and other journals. Delbanco has been awarded the Great Teacher Award from the Society of Columbia Graduates (2006), named America’s Best Social Critic by Time magazine (2001), and received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama (2012). In 2022, he delivered the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and holds fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, and National Endowment for the Humanities.

Professional Email: andrew.delbanco@columbia.edu