Willson Center Director Nicholas Allen to give Astor Lecture at Oxford

Nicholas Allen, Franklin Professor of English and director of the Willson Center, is an Astor Visiting Lecturer in the humanities at the University of Oxford this summer. During his visit he will give a series of workshops and a talk on “Coastal Literature and the Twentieth Century: Ireland and the Atlantic World” at 5:30 p.m. June 8 in Lecture Theatre 2, English Faculty, Oxford. The presentation comes from a current project on literature, art and the sea from the twentieth century to the present.

“I am excited to represent the University of Georgia in Oxford as I give one of this year’s Astor Lectures,” Allen said. ‘UGA has a vibrant connection with Oxford through its residential study abroad program, which has sent generations of humanities students there to work on all kinds of literary and historical subjects. I am looking forward to adding to that conversation from the perspective of my own work on Irish literature.’

Allen is a scholar of Irish literature whose books include Broken Landscapes: Selected Letters of Ernie O’Malley; Modernism, Ireland and Civil War; and George Russell and the New Ireland. His interests include the study of modernism, empire, and increasingly, writing about ocean and archipelago. Coastal Works: Cultures of the Atlantic Edge, an essay collection that Allen edited with Nick Groom and Jos Smith, will be published shortly by Oxford University Press.

Astor Visiting Lecturerships provide funding for visits to Oxford by distinguished academics from the United States for up to one week. Allen’s visit is at the invitation of the Faculty of English Language and Literature.