Dr Jonathan Ellis
School of English
Reader in American Literature
+44 114 222 8465
Full contact details
School of English
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
- Profile
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I completed my PhD at the University of Hull, having previously taken a BA in English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. I joined the School of English at Sheffield in 2005, becoming a Senior Lecturer in 2010 and a Reader in 2015.
- Research interests
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Most of my research has been on the twentieth-century poet, Elizabeth Bishop. My first book, Art and Memory in the Work of Elizabeth Bishop, was published in 2006. I have since co-edited two books with Professor Angus Cleghorn, The Cambridge Companion to Elizabeth Bishop in 2014 and Elizabeth Bishop in Context in 2021. Reading Elizabeth Bishop: An Edinburgh Companion, was published in 2019.
I have co-organised several international conferences on Elizabeth Bishop’s work, in Sheffield (2015), Paris (2018), Oxford (2022), and Glasgow (2023). As part of the Bishop conference in Sheffield, I commissioned Charlotte Hodes and Deryn Rees-Jones to create a poem-film based on Bishop’s poem, “Questions of Travel.” The film premiered at the Site Gallery and was shortlisted for an AHRC Research in Film Award. I am on the Editorial Board of the peer-reviewed journal, Bishop—Lowell Studies.
In addition to scholarship on Bishop, I have published articles on Amy Clampitt, Paul Muldoon, and Sylvia Plath, among others. An abiding interest in film is represented by recent publications on Guillermo del Toro, Barbara Hammer, and Lynne Ramsay, and a collection of essays, co-edited with Dr Ana María Sánchez-Arce, titled Remembering Annie Hall (Bloomsbury, 2023).
Much of my recent research is on twentieth-century letter writing. In 2008 I was awarded a British Academy Research Development Award to fund this work. The BARDA award supported the organisation of a series of public lectures on letter writing by epistolary scholars and writers. Speakers included Anne Fadiman, Hermione Lee, Edna Longley, Hugh Haughton, Angela Leighton, Paul Muldoon, and Frances Wilson. An edited collection of essays inspired by this series, Letter Writing Among Poets: From William Wordsworth to Elizabeth Bishop, was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2015. I have recently finished a book on Letters for Oxford University Press.
In 2023, Professor Susan Rosenbaum and I co-curated the first exhibition of Bishop’s picture postcards at the Vassar College Special Collections Library. The exhibition attracted widespread acclaim, featuring in The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, and The Times Literary Supplement. In Spring 2025, the exhibition travelled to Key West, Florida, to celebrate the reopening of the Elizabeth Bishop House on White Street.
Professor Rosenbaum and I have recently been awarded an AHRC Catalyst Award to broaden the focus of this research to consider Bishop’s creation of and engagement with visual art more generally. We are curating further exhibitions of Bishop’s postcards at the Sorbonne (2026) and Sheffield (2027), editing a trade book of Bishop’s Postcards for Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and completing a scholarly edition, provisionally titled An Art of Looks: Elizabeth Bishop and Visual Culture, for Harvard University Press.
In addition to my academic work, I have published non-fiction writing in The Letters Page, The Manchester Review, Ploughshares, and The Tangerine. During lockdown, I also edited a cluster of essays on Taylor Swift’s album, evermore, for the journal Post45. The cluster contains essays by several colleagues and graduates of the School of English.
- Publications
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Books
- Elizabeth Bishop's Postcards. Poughkeepsie, New York: Vassar College Libraries.
- Elizabeth Bishop in Context. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
- READING ELIZABETH BISHOP: AN EDINBURGH COMPANION.
- Art and Memory in the Work of Elizabeth Bishop. Ashgate Pub Co.
Edited books
- “Don't look back”: The relationship between Richard Linklater's Before… trilogy and Annie Hall. London: Bloomsbury. View this article in WRRO
- Remembering Annie Hall..
- Reading Elizabeth Bishop: An Edinburgh Companion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
- Letter Writing Among Poets: From William Wordsworth to Elizabeth Bishop. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
- The Cambridge Companion to Elizabeth Bishop. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Journal articles
- Elizabeth Bishop's Eczema. Ploughshares.
- Introduction: After the fall. Remembering Annie Hall, 1-17.
- Elizabeth Bishop and the Art of Losing. Bishop–Lowell Studies, 2, 130-137.
- The Poet’s Mistake by Erica McAlpine.. Bishop–Lowell Studies, 1, 129-132. View this article in WRRO
- Katherine Mansfield's Meringues. The Modernist Review(30).
- Under the influence: Elizabeth Bishop’s England and Frances Leviston’s Louisiana. Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 18(2), 152-176. View this article in WRRO
- ‘For a Child of 1918’: Elizabeth Bishop at Seven Years Old. The Manchester Review(22).
- INTRODUCTION: INCOMPATIBLE BISHOPS?. Reading Elizabeth Bishop an Edinburgh Companion, 1-15.
- Elizabeth Bishop in the Present Tense: On Barbara Hammer's Welcome to this HOuse. Another Gaze(2), 52-56.
- Haunting Me. The Tangerine, 4, 48-58.
- More Questions than Answers. PN Review, 44(2 [238]), 60-61.
- Poetry Ireland Review. Poetry Ireland Review(115), 124-127.
- "Can I go? Is it over?”: Endgames in Woody Allen’s Cinema. Post Script, 31(2), 23-33.
- Sylvia Plath and the mythology of women readers. JOURNAL OF GENDER STUDIES, 21(3), 338-339.
- FIRE SEASON Field notes from a wilderness lookout. TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT(5666), 31-31.
- Loving Larkin. Poetry Ireland Review, 103, 89-99.
- The Art of Anime: Freeze Frames and Moving Pictures in Hayao Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service. Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, 2(1), 21-34.
- Aubade and elegy: Elizabeth bishop's love poems. English, 60(229), 161-179.
- Exchanging Recipes. Poetry Ireland Review, 100, 116-124.
- The Art of Anime: Freeze-Frames and Moving Pictures in Miyazaki Hayao's Kiki's Delivery Service. Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, 2(1), 21-34.
- Between the Butterfly and the Caterpillar. Poetry Ireland Review, 97, 109-114.
- Elizabeth Bishop's Bone Key Poems. PN Review, 34(3), 37-40.
- The 'quiet girl'. TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT(5461), 24-24.
- The 'post-birthday world'. TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT(5431), 21-21.
- Beware of God. TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT(5364), 21-21.
- In Dreams Begins Responsibility: An Interview with Haruki Murakami. GEORGIA REVIEW, 548-567.
- From maps to monuments: Elizabeth Bishop's shoreline poems. MOSAIC, 36(4), 103-119.
- Elizabeth Bishop and the Spanish Civil War. Journal of Modern Literature, 27(1/2), 137-148.
- Amy Clampitt's Music. Thumbscrew(16), 78-83.
Book chapters
- Introduction: after the fall In Ellis J & Sanchez-Arce AM (Ed.), Remembering Annie Hall (pp. 1-17). Bloomsbury
- Plath as Punch Line (pp. 17-30). Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Criticism and Reviews, ELIZABETH BISHOP IN CONTEXT (pp. 384-394).
- ELIZABETH BISHOP IN CONTEXT Introduction, ELIZABETH BISHOP IN CONTEXT (pp. 1-+).
- Plath and the American Poetry Scene, Sylvia Plath in Context (pp. 12-21). Cambridge University Press
- ELIZABETH BISHOP IN IRELAND: FROM SEAMUS HEANEY TO COLM TÓIBÍN, Reading Elizabeth Bishop an Edinburgh Companion (pp. 307-320).
- Introduction: Incompatible Bishops? In Ellis J (Ed.), Reading Elizabeth Bishop An Edinburgh Companion (pp. 1-15). Edinburgh Companions to Litera
- INTRODUCTION: INCOMPATIBLE BISHOPS?, READING ELIZABETH BISHOP (pp. 1-15).
- North and South: Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar In Dobson J & Rayner J (Ed.), Mapping Cinematic Norths: International Interpretations in Film and Television (pp. 113-129). Peter Lang
- Last letters: Keats, Bishop and Hughes, Letter Writing Among Poets from William Wordsworth to Elizabeth Bishop (pp. 231-245).
- Introduction: ‘For what is a letter?’, Letter Writing Among Poets Edinburgh University Press
- Introduction: North and South, CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO ELIZABETH BISHOP (pp. 1-+).
- Alice in Wonderland: The Authoring and Editing of Elizabeth Bishop's Uncollected Poems In Cleghorn A, Hicok B & Travisano T (Ed.), Elizabeth Bishop in the Twenty-First Century University of Virginia Press
- Reading Bishop Reading Darwin, Science in Modern Poetry: New Directions (pp. 181-193). Liverpool University Press
- The Unquiet Dead: Memories of the Spanish Civil War in Guillermo del Toro’s Cinema In Sinha A & McSweeney T (Ed.), Millennial Cinema (pp. 173-191). Columbia University Press
- Michael Donaghy, British Writers Supplement XIX (pp. 55-70). Gale
- Ekphrastic Poetry: In and Out of the Museum In Martiny E (Ed.), A Companion to Poetic Genre Wiley-Blackwell
- Mailed into space: On Sylvia Plath's Letters In Bayley S & Brain T (Ed.), Representing Sylvia Plath (pp. 13-31). Cambridge Univ Pr
- Between us: Letters and Poems of Stevenson and Bishop In Leighton A (Ed.), Voyages Over Voices: Critical Essays on Anne Stevenson (pp. 28-54). Liverpool Univ Pr
- Absence as Influence: Samuel Beckett and Paul Muldoon In Feldman M & Nixon M (Ed.), Beckett's literary legacies (pp. 40-57). Cambridge Scholars Publishing
- Boating through Venice: Cultural Translation in Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion In Macedo AG (Ed.), Identity And Cultural Translation: Writing Across the Borders of Englishness (pp. 237-246). Peter Lang Pub Inc
- Elizabeth Bishop: North & South In Roberts N (Ed.), A Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry (pp. 457-468). Wiley-Blackwell
- The Snow Queen: Elizabeth Bishop and Nova Scotia In Anderson LR & Shapcott J (Ed.), Elizabeth Bishop (pp. 63-86). Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Book reviews
- On Elizabeth Bishop. PN Review(238), 60-61.
- 300 ARGUMENTS. TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT(5961), 33-33.
- HOTEL. TLS-THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT(5894), 30-30.
- Elizabeth Bishop's Postcards. Poughkeepsie, New York: Vassar College Libraries.
- Research group
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I welcome applications from potential PhD students in all areas of my research interests, particularly American and British poetry of the modern and contemporary periods and the art of letter writing and its relationship to other literary genres. I have also supervised Creative Writing projects. I am currently supervising two PhD students, one on Sylvia Plath and the other on Chloé Zhao's Transnational Cinema.
In the past few years, I have successfully supervised PhD projects on Elizabeth Bishop, John Burnside, William Burroughs, Cold War fiction, Ted Hughes, twentieth-century letter writing, film adaptation, film noir, and the influence of Annie Hall on contemporary cinema.
- Teaching activities
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I teach in all areas of my research, particularly American fiction, film and poetry. Courses I have taught at Sheffield include modules on Romantic and Victorian Poetry, Contemporary Literature, Twentieth-Century American Poetry and Road Movies. Since 2005 I have taught an MA course on Letter-Writing in the Twentieth-Century.