Jim Carson, who began his academic career at Kenyon in 1988, is a specialist in eighteenth-century literature and Romanticism. In addition to teaching at Kenyon, he held a visiting appointment at Stanford University, where he taught courses in the Restoration and eighteenth century. He is the author of "Populism, Gender, and Sympathy in the Romantic Novel." His current research focuses on animals, especially dogs, in the Romantic period. His scholarly work has been supported by a Huntington/British Academy Fellowship, an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship at the Huntington Library and an American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Short-Term Fellowship at the Clark Library at UCLA. He was the initial holder of the William P. Rice Chair in English and Literature (2012-2015).
Jim served a four-year term as English Department chair and directed the honors program on three occasions. He has taken a particular interest in college service, chairing several committees of the faculty: the Curricular Policy Committee, Faculty Affairs Committee and Resource Allocation and Assessment Subcommittee. For this work, he received the Kenyon College Distinguished Faculty Service Award in 2007.
Education
1986 — Doctor of Philosophy from Univ. of California Berkeley
1979 — Master of Arts from Univ British Columbia
1975 — Bachelor of Arts from University of Alberta