Jonathan A. Allan

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.

During his Canada Research Chair, Dr. Allan is working on the critical study of men and masculinities in a variety of spaces in the social sciences and the humanities. Dr. Allan is interested in the ways in which masculinity is lived, enacted, and embodied in everyday life.

His current research project is titled, Men, Masculinity, and the Procreative Realm, for which he received a SSHRC Insight Grant. One of the research outcomes from this project, Men, Masculinities, and Infertility (Routledge 2022), is an open-access book-length study of cultural representations of men’s infertility. Drawing on ideas of storytelling, this book explores how stories of infertility are told across popular fiction, canonical fiction, men’s memoirs of infertility, and film and television. 

Dr. Allan is currently working on a second outcome from the SSHRC Insight Grant, Snip Snap (under contract with UBC Press), a book-length study of vasectomy. Over the course of this book he considers the history of vasectomy, including how it was punitive, then tied to eugenics, through to elective vasectomy, the mainstreaming of vasectomy, and the decline of vasectomy (and its resurgence following the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization). The goal is to provide a comprehensive study of the vasectomy that enables readers to think about what the vasectomy means and why it matters, while also understanding its complex and troubling history. Snip Snap asks timely questions about the vasectomy, access to vasectomy, and the challenges to vasectomy. This book thus contributes to the overarching goal of his research, which considers the role and responsibilities men have in the procreative realm.

Dr. Allan continues to research a host of other topics coming out of earlier research projects, most especially masculinity and in/fertility; masculinity and circumcision, including a forthcoming monograph titled, Uncut: A Cultural Analysis of the Foreskin (University of Regina Press, 2024). In this book, Dr. Allan 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.

Dr. Allan’s future research will consider the history of anti-circumcision activism. In this project, he will draw on interviews and archival work to uncover the history and rise of anti-circumcision activism.

Research Areas:

Teaching Areas:

Research Funding: Canada Research Chairs (2014-2024), Brandon University Research Committee (2014-2016; 2016-2018; 2017-2019, 2019-2021), Romance Writers of America (2015-2016), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (2016-2018; 2018-2020; 2019-2023), Research Manitoba (2018-2020).

Upcoming Lectures

“An object of terror and delight”: Penile Reading in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland. 31st Northern Plains Conference on Early British Literature. Grand Forks, North Dakota. April 12-13, 2024.

Publications

Books and Edited Collections

Uncut: A Cultural Analysis of the Foreskin. Regina: University of Regina Press (November 2024)

Men, Masculinities, and Infertilities. London: Routledge, 2022. Link.

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).

Forthcoming Publications

Select Publications (since 2021)

Courses