Photo: Damares Stenbakk

Photo: Damares Stenbakk

I am Associate Professor of English Literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Education, University of Agder (UiA), Kristiansand, Norway. At UiA, I teach on the bachelor's programme in English, the master’s programme in English (Literature), and I contribute to the PhD programme in literary studies. At BA level, I teach survey courses on British, American and Global Anglophone literature and offer a specialised module on modernism. At MA level, I teach a course on literature and religion.

Literary Editing and the Archival Turn

One strand of my research to-date has focused on literary editing. I co-edited an edition of a previously unpublished long poem by David Jones entitled The Grail Mass and Other Works (Bloomsbury Academic 2018; paperback 2022). Rosie Lavan, in the Review of English Studies, described this volume as ‘a deeply impressive textual achievement, and a brilliantly realized and instructive engagement with a rich and complex literary archive’. The volume was the subject of ‘Mapping the Artist’s Mind: The Grail Mass, Modernism and Inscription’ research seminar at the David Jones Research Center (2021). I have been invited to talk about this work at seminars hosted by the David Jones Research Centre and the David Jones Digital Archive Project. This strand of my work developed from a visiting studentship I held at the Editorial Institute, University of Boston (2014-2015).

Most recently, I have been working (with Matthew Feldman, Anna Svendsen and Erik Tonning) on an edited collection entitled The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modernist Archives (2024), which has been commissioned by Bloomsbury Academic. One of the central sections of this volume explores the decisions made in recent editions of modernist texts with chapters on editions of Samuel Beckett, Katherine Mansfield, Dorothy Richardson, May Sinclair, Gertrude Stein and Evelyn Waugh. I have co-written a chapter (with Matte Robinson) concerning recent editions of H.D.’s prose works and reflecting on what a future edition of the poetry might learn from the editorial work undertaken on H.D.’s corpus to-date.

Literature and Religious Culture

Another strand of my scholarship has focused on twentieth-century literature, poetry and the relationship between literature and religious culture. My monograph Modernism and Religion: Between Mysticism and Orthodoxy (2023) is published in Edinburgh University Press’s ‘Critical Studies in Modernist Culture’ series and concerns the ways in which forms of poetry intersect with ongoing processes of religious change in the first half of the twentieth century. Douglas Mao, Russ Family Professor in the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University, called the study ‘perceptive, absorbing, irreplaceable’ and explained that 'in showing how modernist writing was shaped by an interplay between the claims of mysticism as individual experience and the benefits of ecclesiastical frameworks, Callison illuminates a rich seam of innovation and perplexity not just in Jones, Eliot and H.D. but in the broader life of early twentieth-century.’

I have published on related themes in leading English literature journals including: ELH, Modernist Cultures and Literature and Theology. In addition, I have a chapter entitled ‘Silent Protest: Mysticism, the Retreat Movement and the Religion Poem’ in The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism, Myth and Religion (Edinburgh UP, 2023) and another commissioned essay on ‘Virginia Woolf and Modernist Mysticism’ in The Edinburgh Handbook to Virginia Woolf, Modernism and Religion (Edinburgh UP, 2024). I have received invitations to talk about this aspect of my work at conferences and seminars, including the ‘Inventing the Secular’ conference (University of Edinburgh / University of Bergen, 2022), ‘Modernism and Alternate Spirituality’ (Royal College of Art, London 2020) seminar, and at the well-established London Modernism Seminar series (2018). I have produced aspects of this work while holding research fellowships or associateships at the Jacques Maritain Center, University of Notre Dame (2018) and the Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture, Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford (2015-16). I peer review articles on literature and religion for Modernism/modernity, ELH and Literature and Theology.

Poetry in Performance: Between Literary and Religious Studies

My next project, provisionally entitled Enchanting Poetry: Counterculture, Literature and Religion in the Long 1960s, builds on my previous work both in the archive (reflecting the ‘archival turn’ in humanities scholarship more widely) and on literature and religion. It explores the connections between the rise of the poetry reading as a performance event over the course of the long 1960s and a wide range of liturgical reforms effected by religious institutions over the same period — the changes to the Roman Catholic liturgy instituted by the Second Vatican Council being among the most prominent. The connection is that both the poetry reading and the liturgy involve the public performance of poetry and the project endeavours to tease out the similarities and differences between these contexts.

The project asks, ‘How did the counterculture shape the practice of poetic performance from the long 1960s onwards and, conversely, what role did religious practice have for a counterculture that sought to liberate itself from institutional religion?’ It seeks to answer this question through archival research both in a literary context, through work in the audio archive of poetry readings and author’s papers, and in a religious context, through work on documentation about changes to religious worship produced by religious institutions and liturgists.

The project will also draw on the methodologies of lived religion. Lived religion is a theoretical perspective that approaches religious history through the accounts of not theologians and clerics, but rather everyday believers. Crucially, it attempts to describe religious practice in ways that laypeople themselves would recognize. Ethnography is an important methodology for the study of lived religion, but the approach also engages with evidence of lay religious practice preserved in the archive. Enchanting Poetry makes the case for twentieth-century literary archives as resources for the study of lived religion.

I have developed this project through a seminar I organised at the Modernist Studies Association Annual Conference (2019) entitled ‘Listening to the Modernist Audio Archive’ and I have also been invited to deliver the keynote lecture entitled ‘“Fools to the World”: Transatlantic Connections in the Twentieth-Century Arts and Crafts and Retreat Movements’ at the annual Catholic Record Society Conference (2023). 

JAMIE CALLISON

Associate Professor of English Literature, Department of Foreign Languages and Translation, Faculty of Humanities and Education, University of Agder

Postboks 422, 4604 Kristiansand, Norway

+47 916 57 212

jamie.c.callison@uia.no

ORCID ID: 0000-0003-2718-7314

Staff Webpage

academia.edu

MLA Commons

CRISTiN (Current Research Information System in Norway)

EDUCATION

  • PhD English Literature, University of Bergen & University of Northampton (2016)

  • PGCE Secondary English, Institute of Education, University College London (2012)

  • MA Theology, Heythrop College, University of London (2011)

  • MA (Cantab) English, Trinity College, University of Cambridge (2007)

ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS

  • Associate Professor, English Literature, Department of Foreign Languages and Translation, Faculty of Humanities and Education, University of Agder (2022-Present)

  • Research Fellow, David Jones Center, Honors College, Washington Adventist University, Maryland, USA (2021-2022)

  • Associate Professor, British and American Literature, Faculty of Education and Arts, Nord University (2017-2022)

  • Affiliate, Jacques Maritain Center, University of Notre Dame (2018)

  • Research Fellow, Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture, Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford (2015-16)

  • Visiting Scholar, Editorial Institute, University of Boston (2014-2015)

  • Assistant Professor, University of Bergen (2013-14)

AFFILIATIONS

AWARDS, GRANTS AND HONOURS

  • ‘Enchanting Poetry: Enchanting Poetry: Counterculture, Literature and Religion in the Long 1960s’, Project Development Support, University of Agder [35,000 NOK] (1/23)

  • Research Group Award, Faculty of Education and the Arts [45,000 NOK] (3/18)

  • Shortlist, British Association of Modernist Studies Essay Prize (02/2015)

  • Meltzer Research Award, University of Bergen [6,000 GBP] (3/15)

  • Chancellor’s Fund Award, University of Northampton (10/14 & 03/15) [1,000 GBP x 2]

  • Doctoral Scholarship [Full Fees & Stipend], Modernism & Christianity Project (04/13)

  • Exchange Scholarship [Full Fees & Stipend], University of Chicago Divinity School (10/07)

  • Elected to Senior Scholarship, Trinity College, Cambridge (06/06)

  • Tripos Prize, Trinity College, Cambridge (06/06)

  • Takahashi Essay Prize, Trinity College, Cambridge (06/05)

PUBLICATIONS

BOOKS: MONOGRAPHS

A perceptive, absorbing, irreplaceable study. In showing how modernist writing was shaped by an interplay between the claims of mysticism as individual experience and the benefits of ecclesiastical frameworks, Callison illuminates a rich seam of innovation and perplexity not just in Jones, Eliot and H.D. but in the broader life of early twentieth-century Christianity.

Douglas Mao, Johns Hopkins University

BOOKS: CRITICAL EDITIONS

The Grail Mass is an indispensable addition to the Jones corpus. It is also a deeply impressive textual achievement, and a brilliantly realized and instructive engagement with a rich and complex literary archive. […] The fullness of Jones’s vision on the page is honoured, and poetic practices which might seem esoteric are validated and released for the reader’s appreciation. Jones’s work needs shrewd and percipient editors, who are not just alert to the complexities of the material text but also prepared to confront and illuminate the challenges of meaning. In Goldpaugh and Callison, it has found them. Their curiosity and authority as editors shines through with the same force whether they are describing Jones’s use of pencil, ink or biro, or revisiting the ambiguous and provocative issue of his political attitudes.

Rosie Lavan, Assistant Professor, Trinity College, Dublin, ‘Review of English Studies’

Like much modernist art, this poem is actually a triumphant achievement of assembling fragments, in this case, by the editors. All those who appreciate the poetry of David Jones, and others who do not yet know his work, will be in debt to them for recreating a work of art with beauty of both content and form.

Professor Paul Fiddes, Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford, ‘Literature and Theology’

BOOKS: EDITED COLLECTIONS

  • (with Erik Tonning, Anna Svendsen and Matthew Feldman), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modernist Archives (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024). [In Press]

  • (with Erik Tonning, Anna Johnson and Paul Fiddes), David Jones: A Christian Modernist? (Leiden: Brill, 2017). ISBN: 9789004356993. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004356993

PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES

LITERATURE REVIEW

ACADEMIC BOOK CHAPTERS

  • ‘Virginia Woolf and Modernist Mysticism’, in The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf, Modernism and Religion, edited by Jane de Gay and Gabrielle McIntire (Edinburgh UP, 2025) [Forthcoming]

  • ‘Catholic Modernisms’, in T&T Clark Handbook of Modern Theology, ed. by Philip G. Ziegler and R. David Nelson (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024). ISBN: 9780567687166. [Forthcoming]

  • (with Erik Tonning, Anna Svendsen and Matthew Feldman), introduction to The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modernist Archives, ed. by Jamie Callison, Matthew Feldman, Anna Svendsen and Erik Tonning (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), pp. 1-16. [In Press

  • (with Matte Robinson) ‘Additions and Editions: H.D. and the Archive’, in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modernist Archives, ed. by Jamie Callison, Matthew Feldman, Anna Svendsen and Erik Tonning (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024), pp. 207-19. [In Press]

SPECIAL EDITIONS OF JOURNALS EDITED

EXHIBITIONS

  • Ice and Fire: ‘Frankenstein’ and the Arctic, Nord University Library, Online Exhibition, 22 October-23 November 2018 [co-curator].

  • Frankenversions: 200 Years of Adapting Frankenstein, Nord University Library, Exhibition, 22 October-2 November 2018 [co-curator].

  • Art in Battle, KODE: Art Museums and Composer Homes, Bergen, 4 September 2014-17 February 2015 [contributor].

BOOK REVIEWS

JOURNALISM

  • ‘The Heart of Time:’ A New Translation by David Jones’ [Poem and Commentary], PN Review 226 (November-December 2015): 13-16.

INVITED TALKS

  • ‘“Fools to the World”: Transatlantic Connections in the Twentieth-Century Arts and Crafts and Retreat Movements’, Keynote Lecture, 65th Catholic Record Society Conference, Hinsley Hall, Leeds, UK 24-26 July 2023

  • ‘Poetic Conversions in a Secular Age: Epiphany, Human Rights, and Retreat in David Jones’, Inventing the Secular: Literature and Religion from Medieval to Modern, New College, University of Edinburgh, 20-22 April 2022; organized by the ‘Literature and Religion’ research group (University of Bergen), the Scottish Network for Religion and Literature (University of Edinburgh), and the Centre for Theology and Public Issues (University of Edinburgh).

  • ‘The Grail Mass: Reassessing David Jones’, David Jones Research Centre, Annual Research Seminar, Roundtable Participant, 29-30 July 2021

  • ‘Editing David Jones’, David Jones Digital Archive Project, National Library of Wales and the Digital Humanities, University Library, University of Cambridge, Roundtable Participant, 5-9 July 2021.

  • ‘Silent Protest: the Modern Retreat Movement’, Modernism and Alternate Spirituality, Royal College of Art, London, 10 January 2020

  • ‘Ritual Observance: Modernism and Lived Religion’, London Modernism Seminar (Seminar Theme: Religion), 3 March 2018, Senate House, University of London.

  • ‘Religious Genius & Spiritual Pedagogy in Evelyn Underhill’, ‘Women Modernists and Religion’ seminar, Rutgers University, January 2015.

SEMINARS AND PANELS ORGANIZED

  • (with Lisa Hollenbach, Oklahoma State University), ‘Listening to the Modernist Audio Archive’, Modernist Studies Association Annual Conference, 17-20 October 2019 [Seminar].

  • (with Jane de Gay, Leeds Trinity University), ‘In/On Retreat: Religion, Reflection & the Public Sphere’, British Association of Modernist Studies Conference, 20-22 June 2019 [Panel].

  • American Culture and Lived Religion, Lectures and Seminar, Nord University, 8-9 October 2019 [Seminar].

  • Co-organiser, The Prophetic Word: Power of the Word International Conference V, Regent's Park College, Oxford, 13-16 September 2017. [International Conference].

  • Co-organiser, BAMS Postgraduate Training Day, University of Oxford, 11 March 2016. [Seminar].

  • Organiser, The Unorthodox Orthodoxy: Catholicism, Modernisms and the Avant-Garde, University of Notre Dame London Centre, 25 September 2015. [Seminar].

  • Co-organiser, David Jones: A Christian Modernist?, University of Oxford, 10-13 September 2014 [International Conference].

PROFESSIONAL ESTEEM

  • Peer-reviewer for Literature and Theology, ELH, Modernism/modernity

  • Reviewer, Literary Studies monographs, Bloomsbury Academic

  • External examiner for NTNU, University of Oslo, and University of Stavanger

SELECTED CONFERENCE PAPERS

  • Sacred Modernism Panel: ‘Rediscovering the Moravians: Between Credulity and Credibility in the Lived Religion of H.D.’, Uses of Modernism, Ghent University, 20-22 September 2023

  • ‘Out-of-this-World Love: Denis de Rougemont on Eros and Agape,’ Love: Contemporary Perspectives in Literature, Philosophy, and Theology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, 5-7 November 2019.

  • ‘Bearing with Reality: Making Retreats with T.S. Eliot’, British Association of Modernist Studies Conference, 20-22 June 2019.

  • ‘New Orthodoxy: Revisiting T.S. Eliot’s Notes Towards the Definition of Culture’, American Studies Association in Norway (ASANOR) Conference (Conference Theme: ‘The Past and Future of Cosmopolitanism’), University of Agder, Kristiansand, 11-13 October 2018.

  • ‘History as Distraction: Sacrament, Liturgy, Poetics’, David Jones: Dialogues With the Past, University of York, 21-23 June 2016.

  • ‘Liturgical Poesis: Rapture, Ritual, and Reform in Christian Modernism and David Jones’, The Power of the Word International Conference IV - Thresholds of Wonder: Poetry, Philosophy and Theology in Conversation, Pontifical University of St Anselm, Rome, 17-20 June 2015.

  • ‘Evelyn Underhill's Awakening of the Soul: An Alternative Modernist Religiosity’, 25th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Bloomberg University, 4-7 June 2015.

  • ‘Knowing Nothing: Revelatory Experience, Pathologized Mysticism and the Divided Mind of Eliot Studies’, Eliot Society Panel, American Literary Association, Boston, 21-24 May 2015.

  • ‘The Dying God at the Last Supper: David Jones, J.G. Frazer, and Eucharistic Theology’, David Jones: A Christian Modernist?, University of Oxford, 10-13 September 2014.

  • ‘‘The Spark of the Soul:’ Evelyn Underhill and Spiritual Transformation’, Women Modernists and Spirituality: A Symposium, University of Stirling, 22-23 May 2014.

  • ‘The Poetry of Irruption: T. S. Eliot and Early Psychology’, Other Eliots: Contemporary Trends in T. S. Eliot Studies, University of Birmingham, 18 April 2014.

  • ‘The Secret History of Medieval Spirituality: Eliot, Jones reading Julian of Norwich’, ‘Unattended Moments:’ The Medieval Presence in the Modernist Aesthetic, University of Otago, New Zealand, 2-5 April 2014.

  • ‘Psychical Training: Interwar Theorists of Mysticism and Popular Literature’, Altered Consciousness, 1918-1980, Queen Mary, University of London, 16-17 November 2013.

  • ‘Celestial Music Unheard: “Marina” and the Christian Mystical Experience’, The Power of the Word International Conference, University of Gdánsk, 12-14 September 2013.

TEACHING

UNIVERSITY OF AGDER, 2022-PRESENT

PhD Programme in Literary Studies

  • Acted as midway seminar commentator.

Master’s Thesis in English

  • Supervised two theses on Shakespeare and performance, and one on the modern elegy.

Literature, Religion, and the Secular

A Master’s course exploring the interactions between religion and literature, drawing on postsecular theory.

Beat Culture: Art and Literature

  • An interdisciplinary course incorporating literary studies, art history, and creative practice using the university’s art collection (largely postwar San Francisco abstract expressionism) as a starting point.

Bachelor Thesis in English

  • Supervised three individual projects to date on Edgar Allen Poe, Henry James and literary representations of madness, notions of childhood in Don DeLillo, and Mary Butts and unbelief.

  • Ran writing seminars and research skills training for all students writing a bachelor’s thesis.

Literary Time Period or Movement (Modernism)

  • This course situated modernist literature in relation to major themes and developments within modernity: manifestos and print culture, the city, the mind, religion and spirituality, race and racism, time, gender and sexuality, war, and technology.

American and British Literature: Part 2

  • Delivered lectures and seminars in this survey course on American, British and Global Anglophone literature after 1900. 

American and British Literature: Part 1

  • Delivered lectures and seminars in this survey course on American and British literature before 1900. 

NORD UNIVERSITY, 2018-22

Master’s Thesis in English

  • Co-supervised a thesis on graphic novels and student motivation.

Critical Reflections on Literature and Language in English Teaching Practices

  • Master’s course for MAGLU/ KS2-KS3/ middle school trainee teachers. I delivered a module on using poetry in the classroom.

Modern Epic: Epic Poetry from 1900 – Present

  • Advanced bachelor’s literature course: Explores the twentieth-century engagement with the idea of epic in the work of T.S. Eliot, H.D. and Derek Walcott

Bachelor Thesis in English

  • Supervised a range of theses on single authors: Edgar Allen Poe, T. S. Eliot, Angela Carter, F. Scott Fitzgerald and themes: World War I Women’s Literature, contemporary autofiction.

Research and Writing

  • The course combined elements of composition / academic writing and an introduction to literary theory.

American Literature and Culture

  • A lecture-based literature survey course.

British Literature and Culture

  • A lecture-based literature survey course.

ACADEMIC ADMINISTRATION

NATIONAL ADMINISTRATION

  • University of Agder representative to the National Academic Council for English Studies, Norway (2022—)

  • Deputy Member (personlig vara), Board, Norwegian Study Centre, University York (2024—2027)

DEPARTMENT ADMINISTRATION

  • Steering Committee (instituttråd), Literature and Culture, Department of Foreign Languages and Translation, University of Agder (2024—2027)

  • Department Coordinator (seksjonskoordinator) (Bodø), English, & Cross-Campus Coordinator, English, Nord University (2020—2021)

  • Trip Leader, Norwegian Study Centre, University of York/ University of Agder (2022-23)

  • Trip Leader, Norwegian Study Centre, University of York/ Nord University (2019-20)

COURSE ADMINISTRATION

  • University of Agder: course organizer (emneansvarlig) for Beat Culture: Literature and Art, the Bachelor Thesis in English, the Literary Time Period or Movement (Modernism) BA course, and the Literature, Religion, and the Secular course at Master’s level.

  • Nord University: course organizer (emneansvarlig), responsible for Research and Writing, Modern Epic courses, and American Literature and Culture for teacher training students (grunnskolelærerutdanning 5-10).