Faculty Bio

Mark A. Allison

Ben T. Spencer Professor of English;
Department Chair;
Co-Director of the Leland F. and Helen Schubert Honors Program

Education

• B.A., Kenyon College
• M.A., University of Chicago
• Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley

About

Mark Allison specializes in the literature and culture of nineteenth-century Britain.  His research interests include utopian literature and theory; socialism, working-class political culture, and Marxism; and the British novel.  His book, Imagining Socialism: Aesthetics, Anti-Politics, and Literature in Britain, 1817–1918, explores the intersections of socialism and literature in the long nineteenth century, with special emphasis on their shared antipathy to institutional politics.

Publications/Presentations

• “Utopian Socialism, Women’s Emancipation, and the Origins of Middlemarch,” ELH 78 (2011): 715–39.
• “The Mustard Seed of British Socialism: Carlyle, Robert Owen, and ‘Infallible Influence.’”  In Thomas Carlyle and the Idea of Influence, ed. Paul E. Kerry et al.  Farleigh Dickinson UP, 2018.  279-93.
• “Building a Bridge to Nowhere: Morris, the Education of Desire, and the Party of Utopia,” Utopian Studies 29.1 (2018): 44-66.
• “Experience, Culture, Utopia: The Long Politics of Raymond Williams.” In Raymond Williams at 100, ed. Paul Stasi. Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. 21-39.
• Imagining Socialism: Aesthetics, Anti-politics, and Literature in Britain, 1817- 1918. Oxford University Press, 2021.