John Bunyan Clayton IV (born July 11, 1951) is an American literary critic who is known for his work on the relationship between nineteenth-century culture and postmodernism. He has published influential works on Romanticism and the novel, Neo-Victorian literature, steampunk, hypertext fiction, online games, contemporary American fiction, technology in literature, and genetics in literature and film. He is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English, Cinema and Media Arts, and Communication of Science, Engineering, and Technology at Vanderbilt University.
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Academic career
Clayton attended Highland Park High School in Dallas, Texas and The Hill School, in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, before going on to receive his B.A. from Yale University. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1979. He taught English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison before moving to Vanderbilt University in 1988. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1999. As chair of the English department at Vanderbilt from 2003 to 2010, he helped recruit renowned professors to the university. From 2012–22, he was director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt.
His first book Romantic Vision and the Novel, published by Cambridge University Press in 1987, compared Victorian realist fiction with romantic poetry. It proposed a theory of Romantic visionary moments in nineteenth-century English fiction as lyric disruptions of the narrative line.
His book on multiculturalism in American fiction and theory, Pleasures of Babel: Contemporary American Literature and Theory, published by Oxford University Press in 1993, was selected by Choice as An Outstanding Academic Book for 1995. Surveying American fiction and literary theory from the 1970s–1990s, Clayton argued for the political and social power of narratives.
His best known book, Charles Dickens in Cyberspace: The Afterlife of the Nineteenth Century in Postmodern Culture, was published by Oxford University Press in 2003. It won the Suzanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship in 2004. Moving from Jane Austen and Charles Dickens to William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, Clayton shows how Victorian literature and technology reverberates in contemporary American culture. His most recent book, Literature, Science, and Public Policy: From Darwin to Genomics (Cambridge University Press, 2023), shows how literature can influence public policy concerning scientific controversies in genetics and other areas.
Clayton was an early adopter of digital approaches to pedagogy, teaching classes on hypertext and computer games beginning in 1996. In 2013, he launched a highly successful MOOC on the Coursera platform titled "Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative," which has reached over 85,000 students from more than 120 countries around the world. More recently, his classes have focused on literature, genetics, and science policy.
Publications
Books
Clayton, Jay (2023). Literature, Science, and Public Policy: From Darwin to Genomics. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781009263504. ISBN 978-1-009-26350-4.
Charles Dickens in Cyberspace: The Afterlife of the Nineteenth Century in Postmodern Culture. Oxford University Press. 2003.
The Pleasures of Babel: Contemporary American Literature and Theory. Oxford University Press. 1993.
Romantic Vision and the Novel. Cambridge University Press. 1987.
Edited collections
Clayton, Jay; King, Claire Sisco, eds. (2022). Fictions of Genetic Privacy. Journal of Literature and Science. Vol. 14. doi:10.12929/jls.14.1-2.
Wald, Priscilla; Clayton, Jay, eds. (2007). Genomics in Literature, Visual Arts, and Culture. Literature and Medicine. Vol. 26. Johns Hopkins University Press. doi:10.1353/lm.2008.0009.
Hirsch, Marianne; Clayton, Jay; Newman, Karen, eds. (2002). Time and the Literary. Essays from the English Institute. Routledge.
Clayton, Jay; Rothstein, Eric, eds. (1991). Influence and Intertextuality in Literary History. University of Wisconsin Press.
Clayton, Jay; Draine, Betsy, eds. (1988). Contemporary Literature and Contemporary Theory. Vol. 29. University of Wisconsin Press. JSTOR i251732.
Awards
2016, Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Queen Mary University, London
2014, Harvie Branscomb Distinguished Professor Award, Vanderbilt University
2005, Suzanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship
1999, John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship
1996–99, The English Institute Board of Supervisors
1997, Spence Lee Wilson and Rebecca Webb Fellow, Robert Penn Warren Center for Humanities
1995–96, president, Society for the Study of Narrative Literature
1988, Robert A. Partlow Award, The Dickens Society
1986, Distinguished Teaching Award, University of Wisconsin
1981, American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship