Hartwick college

Professor Travisano has been the Chair of the Department of English & Theatre Arts since January 2009.  He specializes in modern and contemporary American literature and in American poetry. He is particularly well known for his critical and editorial work on the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), Robert Lowell (1917-1977), and the poets of their generation. Along with many articles, Professor Travisano has published such books as Elizabeth Bishop: Her Artistic Development (Virginia, 1988) and Midcentury Quartet: Bishop, Lowell, Jarrell, Berryman and the Making of a Postmodern Aesthetic (Virginia, 1999). He is co-editor of Gendered Modernisms: American Women Poets and Their Readers (Pennsylvania, 1996). Travisano is co-founder and first president of the Elizabeth Bishop Society. At present, Travisano is co-editing The New Anthology of American Poetry (Rutgers University Press), a three-volume work that will cover the entire range of American poetry. Volume One of The New Anthology appeared in 2003 and was selected as an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice. 

His plans to write a biography of Elizabeth Bishop have been supported by the award of a 2010 Summer Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

Professor Travisano is also the editor, with Saskia Hamilton, of Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008). The book  has been reviewed with high praise in the print, broadcast, and electronic media (including National Public Radio, The NY Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Oprah, and elsewhere). Writing in the Boston Globe, William H. Pritchard said, "The task of assembling and editing [these letters] has been filled in an exemplary manner by Thomas Travisano, author of an excellent critical study of Elizabeth Bishop[...]. Travisano and several Hartwick students worked for years to transcribe and order the letters, each of which is extensively annotated. Selections of the letters have been published in many journals, including Poetry (Chicago) and American Poetry Review.

Travisano frequently draws on this research in his teaching. In the current academic year he is teaching a First Year Seminar using The New Anthology and a senior seminar on the poetry and letters of Bishop and Lowell. He works closely with Hartwick students, who have served as editorial assistants on his various projects. Travisano also teaches surveys of American literature and expository writing courses, including an advanced course in Creative Non-Fiction.

E-mail: travisanot@hartwick.edu
Office: Clark 218
Phone: 607-431-4907