Jonathan Jones was born in Stoke-on Trent, England, best known as the birthplace of the author Arnold Bennet and the 18th century potter and abolitionist Josiah Wedgwood grandfather of Charles Darwin. As a young man his ambition was to become a professional footballer and play for Liverpool F.C until in an epiphany worthy of Joyce’s Dubliners he realised he wasn’t good enough and took solace in reading and writing extensively. His interests include cinema (Film Noir and the American Western), working out whenever he can get to the gym, and travel. He has taught at John Cabot University since 2014 all levels of English composition courses. Prior to teaching at John Cabot, he taught composition at the American University of Rome. He graduated with his undergraduate degree in English Literature and American Studies from Keele University in 1997, and his M.A. in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University College in 1998. He was awarded his M.Res in Humanities again from Keele University in 2004, and holds a PhD in Literature from Sapienza University, Rome.
Research:
Professor Jones’s research interests focus primarily although not exclusively on the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald and how his work continues to be re-evaluated both within the American canon, and also world literature. His PhD focused on the potential benefits of approaching Fitzgerald as an archetypal ‘Western’ writer from the perspective of non-Western paradigms such as the Japanese concept of heroic failure. While adapting to the considerations of how Fitzgerald’s writing disseminates and translates across new forms of digital media, Professor Jones is particularly committed to examining how Fitzgerald studies articulate more problematic questions of race and gender in re-reading both his major works The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night, and The Love of The Last Tycoon, as well as his short stories through the early 21st century.
In his composition courses Professor Jones encourages students to develop strong writing skills through active reading both in and out of class, focusing on choice of language and the evaluation of credible scholarly sources. Peer review remains at the heart of the writing process in class backed up by scholarly discussion of readings and films on a variety of topics including nostalgia and modernity, the American Dream, Freudian theory, horror films, the civil rights movement, and representations of the Holocaust.
Creatively Professor Jones has had a number of short stories, poems and articles published in journals such as Isthmus, Washington Square Review, Negative Capability Press, The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review and East Jasmine Review. In terms of academic scholarship his essay “Strangers in the World of the Emotions – Re-Evaluating L.P Hartley’s The Go-Between” was published in 2015 by War, Literature and the Arts, and as a member of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society, he has also work published by and currently forthcoming in The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review. In May 2020 his novel My Lovely Carthage was also published by independent press J. New Books.
