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Department of English

Jay Clayton

William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English
Director, Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy. Professor of Cinema and Media Arts. Professor of Communication of Science and Technology.

Jay Clayton is author or editor of seven books and more than 40 articles and chapters, and he has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and elsewhere. His published scholarship has ranged from Romantic poetry and the Victorian novel to contemporary American literature, film and digital media, science and literature, and medicine, health, and society. His book, Charles Dickens in Cyberspace: The Afterlife of the Nineteenth Century in Postmodern Culture, focused on the depiction of computers, information technology, and cyborgs from the Victorian era to the twenty-first century. This study won the Suzanne M. Glasscock Humanities Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship.  His recent work has concentrated on the ethical, social, and cultural issues raised by genomics.

Jay Clayton received his B.A. from Yale University and his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. He began his teaching career at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was the first director of the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and received the Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award.  At Vanderbilt, he teaches courses on Victorian literature, digital media, online gaming, genetics in literature and film, and contemporary American literature.  He served as chair of the English department from 2002–2010.

 

Specialization(s)

Victorian literature, digital media, game studies, medical humanities, genetics and literature, science policy

Representative publications

BOOKS:

Charles Dickens in Cyberspace: The Afterlife of the Nineteenth Century in Postmodern Culture (Oxford University Press, 2003)
The Pleasures of Babel: Contemporary American Literature and Theory (Oxford University Press, 1993)
Romantic Vision and the Novel (Cambridge University Press, 1987)

EDITED VOLUMES:

Time and the Literary. Ed. with Karen Newman and Marianne Hirsch. (Routledge, 2002)
Influence and Intertextuality in Literary History. Ed. with Eric Rothstein. (University of Wisonsin Press, 1991)

SELECTED ARTICLES

“Time Considered as a Helix of Infinite Possibilities,” Medical Humanities 47.2 (2021)

"The Ridicule of Time: Science Fiction, Bioethics, and the Posthuman," American Literary History (2013)

"Literature and Science Policy: A New Project for the Humanities," PMLA


"Victorian Chimeras, or, What Literature Can Contribute to Genetics Policy Today," New Literary History


"Frankenstein's Futurity: Clones, Replicants, and Robots" in The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley


"Convergence of the Two Cultures: A Geek's Guide to Contemporary Literature, American Literature"


"The Voice in the Machine: Hazlitt, Hardy, James" in Language Machines: Technologies of Literary and Cultural Production


"Genome Time" in Time and the Literary


"Concealed Circuits: Frankenstein's Monster, the Medusa, and the Cyborg," Raritan


"Narrative and Theories of Desire," Critical Inquiry

Awards

  • John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship 
  • ACLS Fellowship 
  • Suzanne M. Glasscock Humanities Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship 
  • Harvie Branscomb Distinguished Professor Award