Amy E. Martin

Accomplishments within the Weissman Center of Leadership

Amy E. Martin, Professor of English on the Emma B. Kennedy Foundation, has served in leadership roles at the Weissman Center for Leadership for more than 14 years. She was the first faculty member to direct the Speaking, Arguing, and Writing (SAW) Program, beginning in 2012. During this time, student use of the center increased significantly and academic support expanded to better serve STEM majors. She also oversaw the implementation of anti-racist and inclusive peer mentoring practices and co-designed and implemented the current practice of placing a SAW mentor in every first-year seminar.

After a national search and a semester as interim director, Amy assumed the role of director of the Weissman Center in 2018. During her tenure, her accomplishments have included developing innovative programming for the campus, local and alum communities. Among many distinguished speakers, the Weissman Center has hosted Massachusetts Representative Ayanna Pressley; labor leader and activist Dolores Huerta; poets Danez Smith and Morgan Parker; Black Voters Matter co-founder Latosha Brown; Janetta Johnson, CEO of the Transgender Gender-Variant Intersex Justice Project; and U.S. elections correspondent Moustafa Bayoumi, a columnist and regular contributor to The Guardian.

The MHC Semester in D.C. program was instituted in 2019 and is now in its sixth successful year. Through a variety of experiential learning initiatives at the Center — for example, the Careers in Public Service trip to Washington, D.C. — Amy expanded opportunities for students, faculty and staff to learn from leaders across many fields, including alums, community organizers and local elected officials.

The Weissman Center supports 20–30 faculty- and student-led events each year through co-sponsorship and employs 100–140 students annually in sustained, transformative leadership development roles. In partnership with Lydia Malone FP’13, director of leadership and public service, Amy instituted the Weissman Center’s Student Leadership Fellows program, selecting 14 students each year who assist with Center operations and develop their own programming. A subset of fellows also serve as Presidential Ambassadors in the Office of the President.

From 2020–2022, Amy hosted the first Weissman Center Distinguished Leadership Fellow, former Mayor of San Juan Carmen Yulín Cruz, and planned the “Our Voices, Our Platforms” lecture series. She led the Weissman Center through the COVID-19 pandemic, maintaining all programming and opportunities in remote formats, and rebuilt the Senior Symposium after COVID. In 2025, nearly 200 seniors presented their capstone academic and creative work to the Mount Holyoke community during this annual event.

In late 2025, the Weissman Center held a meaningful tribute honoring one of Mount Holyoke’s most accomplished alums, the late Congresswoman Nita M. Lowey ’59, highlighting how the College is preparing the next generation of leaders for our democracy.

Biography

Amy Martin is the author of Alter-nations: Nationalisms, Terror, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Britain and Ireland (Ohio State University Press, 2012). This book investigates how Victorian cultural production on both sides of the Irish Sea grappled with the complex relationship between British imperial nationalism and Irish anticolonial nationalism. She argues that, at this interface of nationalisms in Anglo-Irish relations, certain formations central to modernity emerge, in particular new narratives of national crisis, the modern idea of 'terrorism,' the modern state form, and forms of anticolonial critique that anticipate postcolonial studies. She has published essays in journals such as Victorian Literature and Culture, the Field Day Review, Victorian Review, and several edited collections including Was Ireland a Colony? and The Black and Green Atlantic. Martin is currently working on a book project that examines internationalism and critiques of empire in nineteenth century Ireland. She has published an article on this subject, “Representing the ‘Indian Revolution’ of 1857: Towards a Genealogy of Irish Internationalist Anticolonialism,” in the Field Day Review (2012), and she has recently lectured on this new project at Princeton University’s Fund for Irish Studies. She has also lectured as a faculty member at the Notre Dame Irish Studies Seminar and at the James Joyce Summer School.

Martin teaches Introduction to the Study of Literature; Gender and Class in the Victorian Novel; Modern Irish Literature; the Irish Gothic; and Victorian Literature and Visual Culture.