Jonathan Barron

Professor of English and Honors Tutorial Instructor
417 Neville Hall
Orono, ME 04469

Phone: 207.581.3822

Office Hours: 11:00 – 12:30pm MWF, or by appointment

E-mail: jonathan.barron@maine.edu

Biography

Professor Barron is an award-winning teacher and a scholar of American poetry and Jewish American literature.  Along with numerous articles and essays, he is the author of How Robert Frost Made Realism Matter(2015) and the co-editor of Jewish American Poetry: Poems, Commentary, and Reflections (2000).  From 2001-2020, he served as the editor of The Robert Frost Review. After teaching in the deep South for over 20 years, he is excited to return to his roots in New England.

Barron recently joined the University of Maine’s English Department after teaching at the University of Southern Mississippi for over twenty years.

Research Interests:

American Poetry, Robert Frost, Jewish American Literature

Courses Taught:

• ENG 382: Jewish American Literature
• ENG 440: Edna St. Vincent Millay and Edwin Arlington Robinson
• ENG 244: Writers of Maine
• ENG 222: Reading Poems

Publications

Books

• How Robert Frost Made Realism Matter. University of Missouri Press, 2015. Designated Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2016
• New Formalist Poets (Volume 282 of The Dictionary of Literary Biography). Co-edited with Bruce Meyer of the University of Toronto. Detroit: Bruccoli, Layman, Clark/Thompson/Gale, 2003.
• Jewish American Poetry: Poems, Commentary, and Reflections. Co-edited with Eric Selinger. Hanover NH: University Press of New England/Brandeis, 2000.
• Roads Not Taken: Re-Reading Robert Frost. Co-edited with Earl Wilcox. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000. 241 pps.

Recent Articles

• Abraham Cahan’s The Rise of David Levinsky in McClure’s Magazine: Race, Capitalism, and Jewish American Identity, Studies in American Jewish Literature, 40.2, 2021:140-171
• “Robert Frost in Early Twentieth Century London: Harold Monro’s Poetry and Drama and Eros.” English Literature in Transition. 2019 (62.2): 186-205.
• “Poetry and Realism” in The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Realism. Ed. Keith Newlin. New York: Oxford UP, 2019: 487-506
• “Subjects and Bric-a-Brac: Frost and Stevens, Snowmen and Woodchucks”: Wallace Stevens Journal Volume 41, Number 1, Spring 2017: 38-49.
• “Robert Frost,” for the prestigious series Scribner’s American Writers Retrospective. Supplement III. 11,000 words. Ed and invited by Jay Parini. 2017. Farmington Hills, MI, Gale/Scribner’s: 91-108. Commissioned Scholarly Essay.