Hannah Gurman received her PhD from Columbia University in May 2008 and currently teaches American Literature at Barnard College. She is working on a book about the connection between official writing and US foreign policy since the end of the Second World War.

She concentrated in 20th-century American literature and U.S. diplomatic history and her dissertation, "The Dissent Papers: The Voice of Diplomats in the Cold War and Beyond," was awarded distinction and won Columbia's prestigious Bancroft Prize.

In the dissertation, she examines the efforts of U.S. State Department officers to affect American foreign policy through the written word. Gurman was an instructor last year at Barnard College and a consultant in the Columbia University Writing Center. She also taught the courses "University Writing" and "Critical Reading" at Columbia from 2004 to 2007. In addition to holding the Marjorie Hope Nicolson Fellowship at Columbia from 2003 to 2008, she received the Alice Green Fredman award in 2007 and was a William Golden Fellow from 2006 to 2007. Gurman has published in Logos and The Minnesota Review and has essays forthcoming in Diplomatic History and the Journal of Contemporary History. She brings her training in literature and history, as well as writing and intensive research, to Gallatin's First-Year Program. She will teach a first-year seminar on war and peace, as well as writing courses that cross the disciplines of literature, history and political theory, including "Utopic/Dystopic America," and "The Politics of Change."