Jamison Kantor
Assistant Professor
Room 229
Ovalwood Hall
Mansfield campus
Areas of Expertise
- British Romanticism
- Political theory
- Economics and aesthetics
- Technology and literature
Education
- PhD, English Literature, University of Maryland, 2013
- MA, English Literature, University of Virginia, 2007
- BA, English, Skidmore College, 2004
Pronouns
He/him/his
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 rooted in equality. A study of early-nineteenth-century radical lyric poetry, slave narratives and the "financial" novel, among other media, Words of Honor also wrestles with 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 one chapter, Kantor argues that Mary Shelley’s novel The Last Man—which features an apocalyptic pandemic—develops a new form of knowledge, “crisis thinking,” where all thought must base itself on the proliferation of self-generating matter over space, not changes over time.
Kantor's articles 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.
Selected Publications
- "Immortality, Romanticism, and the Limit of the Liberal Imagination." PMLA, vol. 133, no. 3, 2018, pp. 508-525.
- “Horace Walpole and the Fate of Finance.” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, vol. 58, no. 2, 2017, pp. 135-55.
- “Say, What is Honor: Wordsworth and the Value of Honor.” Nineteenth-Century Literature, vol. 71, no. 1, 2016, pp. 1-36.
- “Burke, Godwin and the Politics of Honor.” S.E.L.: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 54, no. 3, 2014, pp. 675-96.
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Review of British Romanticism and the Critique of Political Reason by Timothy Michael, Studies in Romanticism, vol. 56, no. 2, 2017, pp. 293-7.
