Emelie Jonsson


Associate Professor, English literature

Job description

Emelie Jonsson is associate professor of English literature at the University of Tromsø, Norway. Her research centers on the friction between human psychology and naturalistic cosmology. She has published evolutionary interpretive arguments on a number of authors, including E. M. Forster, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Joseph Conrad, as well as collaborated on quantitative projects concerning intellectual history, biocultural theory, and poetic archetypes reflecting mating strategies.


  • Joseph Carroll, John A. Johnson, Emelie Jonsson, Rex E. Jung, Valerie van Mulukom :
    Editorial: Imaginative culture and human nature: Evolutionary perspectives on the arts, religion, and ideology
    Frontiers in Psychology 2022 DOI

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    Publications outside Cristin

    Book

    Jonsson, Emelie. The Early Evolutionary Imagination: Literature and Human Nature. Palgrave Macmillan: 2021.

     

    Edited Book

    2020. Carroll, Joseph, Mathias Clasen and Emelie Jonsson. Evolutionary Perspectives on Imaginative Culture. Springer. https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030461898

     

    Articles and Chapters

    2022. Carroll, Joseph, John A. Johnson, Emelie Jonsson, Rex E. Jung, and Valerie van Mulukom.
    "Editorial: Imaginative Culture and Human Nature: Evolutionary Perspectives on the Arts, Religion, and Ideology."
    Frontiers in Psychology.

    2020. Jonsson, Emelie. “The Old Tune: English Professors on the History of Science.” Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture 4.2.

    2020. Jonsson, Emelie. “Evolutionary Literary Theory.” In The SAGE Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology by Todd K. Shackelford.

    2020. Jonsson, Emelie. “Heart of Darkness: Joseph Conrad’s Confrontation with Amoral Nature.“ In Carroll, Joseph, Mathias Clasen, and Emelie Jonsson. Evolutionary Perspectives on Imaginative Culture. Springer. https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030461898

    2019. Jonsson, Emelie. “Dystopia and Utopia After Darwin: Using Evolution to Explain Edward Bulwer Lytton’s The Coming Race” In Joseph Trotta, Zlatan Filipovic, and Houman Sadri. Broken Mirrors: Representations of Apocalypses and Dystopias in Popular Culture. New York: Routledge, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429280634 pp: 74-89.

    2019. Kruger, Daniel and Emelie Jonsson. “The Viking and the Farmer: Alternative Male Life Histories Portrayed in the Romantic Poetry of Erik Gustaf Geijer.” Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture. 3: 2 (2019), 17-38.

    2018. Jonsson, Emelie. “T. H. Huxley, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Impact of Evolution on the Human Self-Narrative.” Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture. 2: 1 (2018), 59-73.

    2017. Carroll, Joseph, John Johnson, Catherine Salmon, Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, Mathias Clasen, Emelie Jonsson. “A Cross-Disciplinary Survey of Beliefs about Human Nature, Culture, and Science.” Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture. 1: 1 (2017), 1-32.

    2017. Carroll, Joseph, Mathias Clasen, Emelie Jonsson, Alexandra Regina Kratschmer, Luseadra McKerracher, Felix Riede, Jens-Christian Svenning, Peter C. Kjaergaard. “Biocultural Theory: The Current State of Knowledge.” Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences. 11: 1 (2017), 1-15.

    2013. Jonsson, Emelie. “The Human Species and the Good Gripping Dreams of H. G. Wells.” Style. 47: 3 (2013), 296-315.

    2012. Jonsson, Emelie. ”’Man is the Measure’: Forster’s Evolutionary Conundrum.” Style. 46: 2 (2012), 161-176.

    2009. Jonsson, Emelie. “The Soul of Man Under Socialism: Oscar Wilde, Art and Individualism.” Moderna Språk. 103: 1 (2009), 1-11.


    Research interests

    Victorian literature, Modernism, Americana, utopias/dystopias, speculative fiction, queer culture, history of science, mythology, evolutionary literary theory, naturalism, moral philosophy/psychology, neuroscience of the imagination, personality psychology, art history, aesthetic theory.

    Teaching

    ENG-1120: Introduction to American Studies
    ENG-1122: Introduction to Literature 

    ENG-2106: Villains in English Literature
    ENG-2131/3106: Short Fiction in English
    ENG-2102/3102: Development of the Novel

    ENG-3197: Genre Fiction (Science Fiction or Fantasy)
    ENG-3153: Literary History (American Naturalism)
    ENG-3114: Modernism



    CV

    Positions

    December 1 2023 to present. Associate professor in English literature, University of Tromsø, Norway.

    August 1 2020 to present.
    Assistant professor in English literature, University of Tromsø, Norway.

    May 2016 to 2023. Associate editor at the peer-reviewed journal Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, Academic Studies Press. www.esiculture.com

    2019, July 2 to July 19. Visiting Professor at Aarhus University, co-teaching the summer course “Sex, Death, and Fiction.”

    2015, January to June. Visiting Ph.D. student at The Centre for Biocultural History, Aarhus University. Participation in continuous seminars, presentation of research, co-authorship of a theoretical article. http://bioculture.au.dk/people/