Jonathan Allison

Research Interests:
Nineteenth-Century British Literature and Culture
Twentieth and Twenty-First Century British Literature and Culture
Availability

Office hours: M,W, 1.00-2.30

Education
  • BA, PGCE Queen's University, Belfast
  • MA, PhD University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Research

Areas of Specialty:

  • Twentieth-Century British and Irish Literature
  • Modernism
  • Poetry
  • Irish and Scottish Studies
  • Textual Studies

Jonathan Allison specializes in modern British and Irish literature and his main research interests are in modern poetry, especially W.B. Yeats and the Anglo-Irish Literary Revival, Louis MacNeice and the Auden generation, and Irish literature since 1945.  He teaches courses on twentieth-century writing, and the Survey of British Literature, 1750-2000.

Allison's annotated edition of Letters of Louis MacNeice (Faber and Faber, 2010) was named a 2010 'Book of the Year' by the Times Literary Supplement. He has edited several essay collections, including Yeats's Political Identities (University of Michigan Press, 1996), Poetry and Contemporary Culture, with Andrew Roberts (Edinburgh University Press, 2002) and Bound for the 1890s (Rivendale Press, 2007). His essays have appeared in many journals, including Colby Quarterly, Critical Survey, Sewanee Review, South Atlantic Review, Yearbook of English Studies, Yeats: An Annual of Critical and Textual Studies. He was editor of the series Irish Literature, History and Culture published by University Press of Kentucky. He previously taught at University College London and the University of Michigan and has worked as an editorial assistant with the London Review of Books. He has been Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh. A former Director of the W. B. Yeats International Summer School, Sligo, he contributed to the documentary film The Passions of William Butler Yeats, produced by Lucasfilm.

Selected Publications:

Books  

Selected articles and chapters

Selected courses taught

  • Seminar on W.B.Yeats (740)
  • Poetry and Modernism, 1900-1945 (740)
  • Contemporary British Poetry and Culture Since 1950 (642)
  • Modernism and Ireland (642)
  • Bibliography and Textual Studies (600)
  • Honors Seminar: Seamus Heaney (495)
  • Yeats and Joyce (481G)
  • British Writers of the Thirties (481G)
  • Modern British Poetry (481G)
  • Scottish Literature (481G)
  • Irish Literature (481G)
  • British Fiction Since 1950 (481G)
  • The Swinging Sixties (440G)
  • Modernism (349)
  • Elegy and Love Poetry (345)
  • Ulysses in Context (330)
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four in Context (330)
  • Survey of English Literature II (242)
  • The Thistle and Shamrock: Scotland, Ireland and America (230)
  • Mythology and Folklore (230)

Exhibitions at Special Collections, University of Kentucky Libraries (co-curated with James Birchfield)

  • All the Olympians: Modern Irish Manuscripts and Editions, launched by Ronald Schuchard (Emory University), spring 2017
  • Four Nobel Laureates: Yeats, Shaw, Beckett, Heaney, launched by Seamus Heaney, (Nobel Laureate), spring 2006
  • Scottish Books and Manuscripts: Exhibition, launched by Ian Duncan (University of California), and Patrick Scott (University of South Carolina), fall 2005
  • The 1890s: Symposium and Exhibition, launched by James G. Nelson (University of Wisconsin), fall 2004
  • Irish Literature 1700-1945: An Exhibition, launched by Helen Vendler, (Harvard University), spring 2003