Jamison Kantor

Jamison Kantor focuses on British Romantic literature, nineteenth-century politics and materialism, whether it takes the form of social practices (like dueling) or physical agents (like viruses). He is working on two books. The first book, Words of Honor: Honor, Romanticism and the Hidden Value of Modernity, argues that the Romantics pitted old notions of honor based on hierarchy against modern representations of honor—in radical lyric poetry, slave narratives and the "financial" novel, among other media—rooted in equality. A study of early-nineteenth-century culture, Words of Honor also reveals an ongoing political problem, in which institutions place abstract ideas about freedom over concrete forms of dignity. Kantor's second book is about technology, automation and the concept of historical progress from 1750 to 1850. In a recent chapter, Kantor argues that Mary Shelley’s novel The Last Man—which features an apocalyptic pandemic—develops a new form of knowledge where all thinking becomes “horizontalized” and is obliged to base itself on networks of self-generating matter over space, not changes over time.

 

Kantor's essays have been featured in S.E.L., Nineteenth-Century Literature, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation and PMLA.

 

Before coming to Ohio State, Kantor was a visiting assistant professor at Colby College and a lecturer at Georgetown University. He is delighted to work with students at all levels on both traditional and non-traditional projects.