Timothy Hampton works on Renaissance and early modern European culture, in both English and the Romance languages. His research and teaching involve the relationship between politics and culture, and focus on such issues as the ideology of literary genre, the literary construction of nationhood, and the rhetoric of historiography. He regularly teaches courses on the early modern period, on travel literature, on the Baroque, on historiography, on lyric. He works on Montaigne, Tasso, Cervantes, Rabelais, Corneille, Lafayette, Shakespeare, Camões, Rimbaud, and Bob Dylan, among other authors. His most recent books are Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe (Cornell UP, 2011), Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work (Zone Books, 2019) and Cheerfulness: A Literary and Cultural History (Zone Books, 2022). His newest book, Trespasser: A Story of Class, Poverty, and Education in the American Desert, will be published by High Road Books in early 2027. (Ph.D., Princeton University).
In 2013, Professor Hampton received the Campus Distinguished Teaching Award, Berkeley’s highest honor for teaching excellence. Professor Hampton is former Director of the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities on the Berkeley Campus.