Donald E. Hall's Biography

headshot of Donald E. Hall

Donald E. Hall

Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs

Academic Affairs, Office of the Executive VP and Provost

As Binghamton's chief academic officer, Hall administers all the academic programs at Binghamton and is responsible for the University’s budget. He provides leadership for undergraduate and graduate student recruitment and admissions, curriculum and academic program development at all levels, faculty recruitment and retention, and international programs. Working with the deans of all six of Binghamton’s schools, he provides overall leadership in the furtherance of Binghamton's academic plan, development of new and strengthening of existing programs, and support for faculty in their contributions to Binghamton's instructional, research and outreach missions. Before coming to Binghamton University, Hall was dean of the faculty of arts, sciences and engineering at the University of Rochester, USA, and held a previous position as dean of arts and sciences at Lehigh University, USA. Provost Hall has published widely in the fields of British studies, gender theory, cultural studies and professional studies. Over the course of his career, he served as Jackson Distinguished Professor of English and chair of the Department of English (and previously chair of the Department of Foreign Languages) at West Virginia University.

Before that, he was professor of English and chair of the Department of English at California State University, Northridge, where he taught for 13 years. He is a recipient of the University Distinguished Teaching Award at CSUN, was a visiting professor at the National University of Rwanda, was Lansdowne Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Victoria (Canada), was Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Cultural Studies at Karl Franzens University in Graz, Austria, and was Fulbright Specialist at the University of Helsinki. He has also taught in Sweden, Romania, Hungary, and China. He served on numerous panels and committees for the Modern Language Association (MLA), including the Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, and the Convention Program Committee. In 2012, he served as national president of the Association of Departments of English. From 2013-2017, he served on the Executive Council of the MLA.

His current and forthcoming work examines issues such as professional responsibility and academic community-building, the dialogics of social change and activist intellectualism, and the Victorian (and our continuing) interest in the deployment of instrumental agency over our social, vocational and sexual selves. Among his many books and editions are the influential faculty development guides, The Academic Self and The Academic Community, both published by Ohio State University Press. Subjectivities and Reading Sexualities: Hermeneutic Theory and the Future of Queer Studies were both published by Routledge Press. Most recently he and Annamarie Jagose, of the University of Auckland, co-edited a volume titled The Routledge Queer Studies Reader. Though he is a full-time administrator, he continues to lecture worldwide on the value of a liberal arts education and the need for nurturing global competencies in students and interdisciplinary dialogue in and beyond the classroom.