James Holstun

Professor

Neocolonialism and world literature, class struggle and radicalism, Afro-American literature before 1900, feminism and Marxism

319 Clemens Hall

Phone: (716) 645-0672

Works in Progress

A study of critical realism, revolutionary socialism, and the global historical novel.

Books

A Rational Millennium: Puritan Utopias of Seventeenth-Century England and America (Oxford University Press, 1987).
Author of Ehud’s Dagger: Class Struggle in the English Revolution (Verso Books, 2000). Winner of the 2002 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize.

Edited Volumes

Selected Articles

“Shoot and Cry: Realism, Modernism, and the Iraq War Fiction of Justin Sirois and Kevin Powers.” 14,000-word essay forthcoming in Cultural Critique.
“‘Mr. Kayerts. He is Dead’: Literary Realism and Conrad's ‘Outpost of Progress.” ELH, vol. 85, no. 1, Spring 2018, pp. 191-220.
“Buffalo Unsteeled: Connie Porter, Leslie Feinberg, and the Persistence of Proletarian Fiction.” The Journal of English Language and Literature (JELL), vol. 63, no. 1, 2017, pp. 23-43.
“‘Nasty, nasty’: Incest, Islamism, and History in Hadji Murat.” Tolstoy Studies, vol. 28, 2016, pp. 55-74.
“Antigone Becomes Jocasta: Soha Bechara, Résistante, and Incendies.” Mediations: Journal of the Marxist Literary Group, vol. 29, no. 1, Fall 2015, pp. 3-42.
“Utopia Pre-Empted: Kett’s Rebellion, Commoning, and the Hysterical Sublime.“ Historical Materialism, vol. 16, no. 3, 2008, 3-53.
“The Spider, the Fly, and the Commonwealth: John Heywood and Agrarian Class Struggle.” ELH, vol. 71, no. 1, Spring 2004, pp. 53-88.
“‘God bless thee, little David!’: John Felton and His Allies,” ELH, vol. 59, no. 3, Autumn 1992, pp. 513-52.
“‘Will you rent our ancient love asunder?’: Lesbian Elegy in Donne, Marvell, and Milton.” ELH, vol. 54, no. 4, Winter 1987, pp. 835-67.
“Tragic Superfluity in Coriolanus.” ELH 50.3, Autumn 1983, pp. 485-507.