Contact Information
Name: Jonas Seth Cope
Title: Associate Professor
Office Location: 157 Calaveras Hall
Email: jonas.cope@csus.edu
Mailing Address: 6000 J street
Office Hours: Spring 2024: Fridays, 1-3 p.m.; by appointment on Zoom
Students: See add/drop policy below!
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The cultivation of poetry is never more to be desired than at periods when, from an excess of the selfish and calculating principle, the accumulation of the materials of external life exceed the quantity of the power of assimilating them to the internal laws of human nature.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/24/magazine/college-free-speech.html
My first book reviewed:
The Wordsworth Circle, vol. 50, no. 4, 2019
The BARS Review, no. 58, spring 2022
Education
PhD, University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, MO, 2012
MA, Fitchburg State University, Fitchburg, MA, 2007
BA, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, 2004
Languages
Latin: advanced reading and translation
Ancient Greek: intermediate reading and translation
Publications
Books
British Romanticism and Prison Reform (under contract)
The Dissolution of Character in Late Romanticism (Edinburgh University Press, 2018).
Articles and Reviews
‘Fenwick, Eliza’. The Routledge Research Companion for Romantic Women Writers, edited by Catherine Blackwell, Ann R. Hawkins and E. Leigh Bonds. New York: Routledge, 2023.
‘Scrapped Sentiment: Letitia Landon and Fisher’s Drawing Room Scrap-Book, 1832–1837’. Romanticism 25, no. 2 (2019): 190–204.
‘Autumnal Affect in the Poetry of John Clare’. Studies in English Literature: 1500–1900 58, no. 4 (2018): 855–75.
‘“His Mind Was … My Disease”: Affect Theory and Eliza Fenwick’s Secresy’. In Romanticism and Affect Studies, edited by Seth Reno. May 2018. 18 pars. Romantic Circles Praxis Series. May 2018. <http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/affect>.
Review of Jane Austen and Animals, by Barbara K. Seeber (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). Romantic Circles Reviews. Edited by Suzanne Barnett. 28 November 2015. Romantic Circles. <https://www.rc.umd.edu/reviews-blog/barbara-k-seeber-jane-austen-and-animals-review-jonas-cope>.
‘“Illusive Light”: Thomas Dermody, the Aisling and Archipelagic Romanticism’. European Romantic Review 26, no. 6 (2015): 757–71.
‘Passive and Dynamic Sincerity in Mary Shelley’s Falkner’. The Keats-Shelley Journal 63 (2014): 123–37.
‘“The Mortal Immortal”: Mary Shelley’s “Overreachers” Reconsidered’. The Explicator 72, no. 2 (2014): 122–26.
‘The Delights and Degrees of Passionate Sensibility: “Mental Fight” in Ann Batten Cristall’s Poetical Sketches’. Romanticism 20, no. 1 (2014): 15–29.
‘“A Series of Small Inconstancies”: Letitia Landon and the Sewn-Together Subject’. Studies in Romanticism 52, no. 3 (2013): 363–87.
‘Stealing the White Man’s Weapon or Forging One’s Own? African and African-American English in Ce’s Children of Koloko and Morrison’s Beloved’. In Critical Supplement (A)1: The Works of Chin Ce, edited by Irene Marques, 63–85. Morrisville: International Confederacy of African Literature and Culture, 2007.
‘“Shaking Off the Old Skin”: The Redemptive Motif in Ellison’s Invisible Man and Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground’. Dostoevsky Journal 7 (2006): 75–91.
Presentations (selected)
‘“His Mind Was … My Disease”: Affect Theory and Eliza Fenwick’s Secresy’. North American Society for the Study of Romanticism, Berkeley, California, August 2016.
‘Affect Theory and Eliza Fenwick’s Secresy’. Modern Language Association Conference, Austin, Texas, January 2016.
‘Scrap-Book Imperialism: Letitia Landon’s Ad Hoc Britishness’, International Conference on Romanticism, Phoenix, Arizona, November 2012.
‘Letitia Landon and the Poetry of Ideological Performance’, North American Society for the Study of Romanticism, Park City, Utah, August 2011.
‘Thomas De Quincey, Knight-Errant: The Influence of Don Quixote upon the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, and other Major Texts of the De Quincey Canon’, Midwest Modern Language Association, St. Louis, Missouri, November 2009.
Service to the Field
Peer Reviewer, European Romantic Review
Peer Reviewer, Victorian Poetry
Peer Reviewer, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature
Peer Reviewer, Studies in Romanticism
Peer Reviewer, Pedagogy (Duke University Press)
Peer Reviewer, The Rocky Mountain Review
Invited Talks
‘John Milton’s Paradise Lost’, Sacramento Central Library, 11 August 2019 and 15 September 2019
‘Jane Austen’s Persuasion’, ‘Notable Books’ Presentation, Sacramento Central Library, 21 May 2017 and 18 June 2017
‘Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” in Context’, Sacramento Poetry Center, 20 March 2016
‘Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights’, Notable Books’ Presentation, Sacramento Central Library, 5 October 2015 and 8 November 2015
Research and Teaching Awards
Research Awards
Research and Creative Activity (RCA) Award, Office of Research, Innovation and Economic Development, California State University, Sacramento, 2020–21: 3WTU – spring 2021
Scholarly and Creative Activity (SCA) Award, College of Arts and Letters, California State University, Sacramento, 2019: 3WTU – fall 2020
Research and Creative Activity (RCA) Award, Office of Research, Innovation and Economic Development, California State University, Sacramento, 2019–20: 3WTU – fall 2019; $301.00 – research support funds
Scholarly and Creative Activity (SCA) Award, College of Arts and Letters, California State University, Sacramento, 2019: 3WTU – spring 2019
Outstanding Faculty Award for Scholarly and Creative Activity, College of Arts and Letters, California State University, Sacramento, 2018–19
Research and Creative Activity (RCA) Award, Office of Research, Innovation and Economic Development, California State University, Sacramento, 2018–19: 3WTU – fall 2018
Research, Scholarly and Creative Activity (RSCA) Award, College of Arts and Letters California State University, Sacramento, 2018: 3WTU – spring 2018
Research and Creative Activity (RCA) Award, Office of Research, Innovation and Economic Development, California State University, Sacramento, 2017–18: 3WTU – spring 2017
Research and Creative Activity (RCA) Award, Office of Research, Innovation and Economic Development, California State University, Sacramento, 2016–17: 3WTU – fall 2016
Research and Creative Activity (RCA) Mini-Grant, Office of Research, Innovation and Economic Development, California State University, Sacramento, 2014–15: 3 WTU – spring 201
Provost’s Research Initiative Fund (PRIF) Grant, Office of Research Affairs, California State University, Sacramento, 2014: $5,000 award
N. E. H. Seminar Member, ‘Reassessing British Romanticism’ (directed by Stephen C. Behrendt), University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2013
English Department Nominee, Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation Award Nomination, Graduate School, University of Missouri, 2012
Graduate Student Association Travel Grant, University of Missouri, 2011
Harry J. and Richard A. Hocks Dissertation Fellowship, English Department, University of Missouri, 2011
Judith A. and Richard B. Schwartz Student Travel Award, University of Missouri, 2010
Departmental Fellowship, English Department, University of Missouri, 2007
Donald E. and Mary Frances Hayden Fellowship, English Department, University of Missouri, 2007
Teaching Awards
Curriculum Redesign Award, College of Arts and Letters, California State University, Sacramento, 2020: 3WTU – spring 2020; $600 – professional development funds
Outstanding Wisdom and Leadership Award (OWL), Peer and Academic Resource Center, California State University, Sacramento, 2019
Nominee, Outstanding Faculty Award for Teaching, College of Arts and Letters, California State University, Sacramento, 2017
Outstanding Wisdom and Leadership Award (OWL), Peer and Academic Resource Center, California State University, Sacramento, 2015
English Department Nominee, Donald K. Anderson Graduate Teaching Assistant Award, University of Missouri, 2011
Courses Taught at CSUS
Undergraduate
ENGL 40B: British Literature II
ENGL 100Z: Topics in Literary Theory and Criticism
ENGL 120A: Advanced Composition
ENGL 140I: British Romanticism
ENGL 140J: The Victorian Imagination
ENGL 145I: John Milton
ENGL 185C: British Women Novelists
ENGL 198T: Senior Seminar
Graduate
ENGL 200A: Methods and Materials of Literary Research
ENGL 240I: Jane Austen
ENGL 240M: The Gothic Novel
ENGL 275: Seminar in Literary History
Add Policy
I do not add any students to any class beyond the cap. The wait-list, moreover, is expunged once the semester starts; this means that whatever position of the wait-list a student may have been on previous to the start of the semester becomes irrelevant at the start of the semester. The only way for a student to add the class after the semester starts is to do so according to all the following conditions: the student must add i) within the first two weeks of the semester; ii) provided the student attends every available class, from start to finish, from day one until the completion of the second week of the semester, including both in-person sessions and online sessions; and iii) provided the student receives my permission to add via email, forwarding the email thereafter to the English Department office.
Let me reemphasize no. ii) above: regardless of the attendance policy in a given course, I do not add any students who do not show up on the first day of class, and at every available session, in person or online, after that class up to the completion of the first two weeks of the semester.
Finally, all students will be "administratively dropped" who are not present in class between the start of the semester and the end of week 2.
