For media and publicity inquiries about Uncut: A Cultural Analysis of the Foreskin, please write to Madeleine Maillet, Marketing and Publicity Manager, University of Regina Press (Madeleine.Maillet@uregina.ca) and Grant Hamilton, Director of Marketing and Communications, Brandon University (HamiltonG@BrandonU.CA).
Jonathan A. Allan is Canada Research Chair in Men and Masculinities and Professor in the Department of English, Drama, and Creative Writing and Gender and Women’s Studies at Brandon University. Dr. Allan is an editor for Journal of Bodies, Sexualities, and Masculinities, interim editor of Boyhood Studies, and Vice-President of the American Men’s Studies Association.
Dr. Allan’s research has long focused on the taboo and the obscene, or topics that might be understood as “unmentionable,” and most often in discussion with men and masculinities. Thus, his work explores how men’s bodies, for instance, are censored or made taboo. For example, he has recently explored men and the procreative realm, studying men’s infertility as well as vasectomy. Dr. Allan seeks to understand the nature of the taboo and the obscene while also highlighting the importance of the topics under consideration, for example, the relation between health and the taboo. In other work, Dr. Allan has considered the idea of nudity and nakedness, as well as the hints of the naked body (for example, underwear), to understand why this is (or is not) obscene. What connects all of this work is a curiosity about how obscenity is managed, understood, and challenged, as well as its limits.
His first book, Reading from Behind: A Cultural Analysis of the Anus (University of Regina Press, 2016), considered societal and cultural anxieties surrounding the butt, the rear, the ass, the anus. His most recent book, Uncut: A Cultural Analysis of the Foreskin (University of Regina Press, 2024) provides an interdisciplinary study of the foreskin and circumcision. Instead of focusing on circumcision, Dr. Allan considers the foreskin, drawing on a wide range of sources (from sex manuals and pregnancy books to policy documents and scientific studies) to understand how it is discussed, represented, and understood. He continues to research the foreskin and circumcision. His article, “Reading Anti-Circumcision Activism in Clothed with the Sun: The Quarterly Journal of Clothes-Optional Living,” which appeared in the Journal of American Culture, received the Carl Bode Award for Outstanding Article (Popular Culture Association). This paper is part of his ongoing interest in anti-circumcision activism, particularly its history, which is fascinatingly complex and nuanced.
Dr. Allan is currently exploring censorship and obscenity, particularly following the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Roth v. United States through to Miller v. California. This project combines literary, cultural, and legal studies to focus on free speech, censorship, and obscenity questions. His course “Censorship and Obscenity” allows students to engage with these questions historically while recognizing the ongoing debates around us. The goal of this project is a book-length study of the debates as they unfolded from the 1950s through the 1970s, with a particular interest in the Warren Court. This book explores various texts — literary texts, films, magazines, photographs, and documentaries — that were challenged in the courts, including the shifting nature of the erotic and the pornographic. As such, Dr. Allan engages with texts like Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, and Tropic of Cancer, alongside sex manuals and erotic case studies, nudism, naturism and nudist publications, and physique and bodybuilding magazines.
Dr. Allan is also undertaking research on the Latin American literary genre known as the “novela del dictador,” (dictator novel) and its treatment of masculinity, recognizing how often the figure of the dictator is a man, and how often (though not always) these novels are written by men. Inherent to this project is a concern with the mobilization of masculinity and patriarchy to the ends of violence and repression in these novels. Across this study, Dr. Allan will read the major novels like El otoño del patriarca by Gabriel García Márquez, Yo, el supremo by Augusto Roa Bastos, El recurso del método by Alejo Carpentier, Cola de lagartija by Luisa Valenzuela, El Señor Presidente by Miguel Ángel Asturias, La novela de Perón by Tomás Eloy Martínez, as well as historical antecedents, such as, José Marmol’s Amalia and Facundo by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, and contemporary challenges to the genre, such as, The King of Cuba by Cristina García and Tengo miedo torero by Pedro Lemebel. This project will result in scholarly articles that will explore how masculinity is represented and how masculinity interacts with obscenity, the body, and perversion.
Dr. Allan’s previous research has considered the role of men in the procreative realm, and he wrote Men, Masculinities, and Infertilities, which explored representations of men’s infertility. Additionally, he has written on men and contraception, most notably, the vasectomy.
Dr. Allan received his PhD from the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto. He holds a Master of Arts in Studies in Comparative Literature and the Arts from Brock University, a Master of Arts in Spanish Language and Culture from Queen’s University, and a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Spanish from Queen’s University.
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Research Funding: Canada Research Chairs (2014-2025), Brandon University Research Committee (2014-2016; 2016-2018; 2017-2019; 2019-2021; 2021-2023; 2023-2025), Romance Writers of America (2015-2016), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (2016-2018; 2018-2020; 2019-2024; 2024-2026), Research Manitoba (2018-2020).
“‘I know it when I see it’: Sexuality, the Procreative Realm, and Sociopornographic Literature.” Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association. Atlantic City, New Jersey. November 7-9, 2024.
Uncut: A Cultural Analysis of the Foreskin. Regina: University of Regina Press (November 2024)
Men, Masculinities, and Infertilities. London: Routledge, 2022.
Men, Masculinities, and Popular Romance. London: Routledge, 2020.
Reading from Behind: A Cultural Analysis of the Anus. Regina: University of Regina Press, 2016; and, London: Zed Books, 2016. (Japanese translation appeared in 2018)
Virgin Envy: The (In)Significance of the Hymen. Regina: University of Regina Press, 2016; and, London: Zed Books, 2016. (with Cristina Santos and Adriana Spahr)
Inversions of Power and Paradox: Studies of Monstrosity. Oxford: Interdisciplinary Press, 2012. (with Elizabeth Nelson).
Jonathan A. Allan
Canada Research Chair in Men and Masculinities
Faculty of Arts
Brandon University
270 - 18th Street
Brandon, Manitoba
R7A 6A9