Faculty

Casey Jarrin

Assistant Professor of English

Ph.D. Duke University, 2006
B.A. Yale University, 1998

A native New Yorker, Casey Jarrin attended Yale, studied Irish-Gaelic at the University of Ireland-Galway, and received her Ph.D. from Duke before coming to Macalester. She is currently working on her first book project, Confessional Acts: Interrogation, Authorship, and the Making of the Modern Irish Subject. From prison cells and interrogation rooms to confessionals and peep-show booths, Confessional Acts examines acts of self-disclosure in prison journals (Oscar Wilde, Tom Clarke), novels (Liam O'Flaherty, James Joyce), plays (Brendan Behan, Martin McDonagh), and films (John Ford and Neil Jordan). In the summer of 2007 she will be immersed in the Oscar Wilde archives at UCLA's Clark Library, revising an article on Wilde's prison writings and campaigns for penal reform. Her essay, "Prison As Art Gallery: Exhibit Collaboration Between Kilmainham Gaol and Alcatraz, 1991-2005," will appear in the volume Geographies and Genders in 2007. She is also editing a collection of essays on transatlantic cultures of violence.

Professor Jarrin works on twentieth-century British and Irish literature, transnational modernism, post-war film, and post-colonial studies. Over the past few years, she has taught courses on modern Irish fiction, apocalyptic British literature/film, literary grotesques, and working-class subcultures, with a focus on criminality, masculinity, and the aesthetics of violence.

Areas of Study

• 20th-Century British and Irish literature/film; transatlantic modernism
• Diasporic Irish studies and immigration history; Gaelic revival and Irish language
• British cultural studies and youth subcultures
• Anglophone post-colonial literature and theory
• Comparative film studies and genre theory (film noir, transnational gangster cinema, horror genre, British/French New Wave)
• Postwar visual and popular culture
• Prison, criminal, and confessional literature
• Dystopian and apocalyptic literature
• Cultures of violence

Fall 2008 Courses

• Introduction to the Novel: Literary Grotesques
• Literary Grotesques

Spring 2008 Courses

• Film Studies: Gangster Cinema, 1930s-Present
• 20th C British Novel: Diasporic London

Previous Macalester Courses

• 20th-Century British and Irish Modernisms: Alienation and Apocalypse
• Representing Violence: Anglophone Fiction and Film

Fellowships and Honors

• National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship: UCLA, Clark Library
• Foreign Language and Area Studies Grants, Irish-Gaelic language study: University of California-Berkeley; University of Ireland-Galway

Publications

• "Prison As Art Gallery: Exhibit Collaboration Between Kilmainham Gaol and Alcatraz, 1991-2005." Geographies and Genders. Ed. Ed Madden. Cambridge Scholars Press. Forthcoming in 2007.

Selected Presentations

• "Transatlantic Irish Noir: John Ford, Jules Dassin, and Liam O'Flaherty's The Informer." (American Conference for Irish Studies, National Meeting, April 2007)
• "Gothic-Erotic in Breakfast on Pluto and The Crying Game" (SAMLA, November 2006)
• "Industrial Gothic: Landscapes of Labor in Conan Doyle's Valley of Fear" (Gothic Studies Association, May 2004)