Dr. Jonathan Dick

Biography

I am a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in nineteenth- and twentieth-century global Anglophone literature, critical university studies, and comparative race and empire studies. My dissertation constructs a global history of the "English-speaking subject," examining stylistic devices used by non-elite Anglophone students taught to identify works of literature and avoid repeating their own writing. My research highlights how English became an academic discipline in the late 1880s. I have received a BA and MA in English and Comparative Literature from the University of Toronto. My work has been recognized through fellowships from the Fulbright Program, the Mellon Foundation, and the Beinecke Library, as well as the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. My article, drawn from my dissertation, titled "Colonial Mixed Metaphors," is forthcoming in English Literary History. At Penn, I have taught and assisted in courses on modern contemporary poetry, queer theory, critical university studies, psychoanalysis, Victorian literature, and novel composition, particularly aimed at the generation of university students. I received the Penn Prize for Excellence in Teaching by Graduate Students in 2024 for my course, "Reading Middlemarch." In the 2025-26 academic year, I will be the Series Mentor for graduate student teachers in the Department of English. Previously, I was a fellow at Penn's Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Innovation (2024-25) and held positions with the Laura K. Valerian Lada-Mocarski Fellowship at Yale University's Beinecke Library (2024), the Diversity Mentorship Fellowship with the Northeast Victorian Studies Association (2022-24), and the Mellon Mid-Doctoral Fellowship at Penn's Price Lab (2022-23). Additionally, I served as the coordinator for the Department of English's Modernist and Contemporary Literatures Reading Group from 2020-2025.

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