Profile
Sarah Chinn came to Hunter in 2001, and primarily teaches 19th century US literatures and cultures, as well as classes in Disability Studies, LGBT literature, and Childhood Studies. She's the author of four books, most recently Disability, The Body, and Radical Intellectuals in the Literature of the Civil War and Reconstruction (2024). In 2020 she won the American Literature Society's 1921 Prize for the best essay in American literary studies. She's also the co-editor in chief of J19: The Journal of 19th Century Americanists.
Prof. Chinn has served in several administrative roles during her time at Hunter. From 2007 to 2011 she was the Executive Director of CLAGS: The Center for LGBT Studies. From 2014 to 2021 she was Chair of the Hunter College English Department, and she currently serves as Chair of the Hunter College Senate.
Currently she's working on an article on Sarah Emma Edmonds, who passed as a man to fight for the Union Army in the Civil War as well as a short book on representations of boy soldiers—both as combatants and as drummer boys—during and after the Civil War.
As well as academic writing, Prof. Chinn has published poems in several literary journals.