Jun-Prof. Dr. Keyvan Allahyari

Junior Professor for Anglophone Literatures in a Global Environment
Keyvan Allahyari, Juniorprof. Dr.
Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik
Prof. Dr. Keyvan Allahyari
Foto: Nicole Berger, Jena University
JenTower, Raum 14S02
Leutragraben 1
07743 Jena Google Maps – LageplanExterner Link

I joined the University of Jena as Junior Professor for Anglophone Literatures in a Global Environment in 2024. Previously, I taught at the University of Melbourne, and held international research fellowships, including Marie Curie European Fellowship at the University of Oslo, and Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship at the University of Tübingen and the University of Potsdam. I completed my PhD in English at the University of Melbourne in 2019.

I have been a Visiting Scholar at the Roderick Centre for the Australian Literature and Creative Writing at James Cook University (2025), a Fryer Library Fellow at the University of Queensland (2022), and an Emerging Critic Fellow at the Sydney Review of Books (2020).

My current research is driven by two main questions: what does imaginative engagements with the border tell us about deeper cultural psychology of our times? And how is imagining borders going to shape our futures as they intersect increasingly with the hold of ecological degradation and Artificial Intelligence?

  • Critical Border Studies
  • New Materialisms
  • Future Studies
  • Oceanic Humanities
  • Cultural Sociology
  • Monographs

    Allahyari, Keyvan. Peter Carey: The Making of a Global Novelist. Palgrave. 2023.

    Allahyari, Keyvan. Liquid Objects: Abdulrazak Gurnah and the Material Ecologies of Water. (forthcoming).

  • Peer-reviewed Academic Articles

    “Border as Reparative Geography: Shailja Patel’s Eastern Africa.” Research in African Literatures. 55. 1 (2025): 125-140.

    “Exceptional Shakespeare: (Mediated) Rendition and the Carceral Middle East in Iqbal Khan’s Othello.” In Russell West-Pavlov, Heterotropic Theatres: Shakespeare and After. Tübingen: Narr/Franke/Attempto, 2025. 307-319.

    “Undocumented Futures: Afrofeminist Conviviality in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street.’ ARIEL. 55. 3-4 (2024): 27-48.

    “The Future’s Impossible Disciplines.” Dialogues in Human Geography. 14.3 (2024): 513–516.

    with Bani Gill, Jacky Kosgei, Pavan Kumar Malreddy, AbdouMaliq Simone, and Russ West-Pavlov). “Homo Proximus: The Migrant Experience – Negotiating Proximities.”. Proximity as Method. Routledge. 2024: 118-129.

    “The Global Refugee: Oceanic Border Thinking in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea.” Literature, Critique, and Empire Today. 59.2-3 (2023): 360–377.

    “The Boochani Effect: Public Feelings and the Limits of Refugee Authorship.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing. 59. 2 (2023): 143-156.

    with Tyne Daile Sumner. “The Politics of Disgust: Form and Feeling in Christos Tsiolkas’ Merciless Gods.” Antipodes. 35.1–2 (2021): 36–52.

    with Nicholas Birns. “Behrouz Boochani on Manus Island: Contesting Refugee Experience in the Global South.” Journal of Australian Studies. 47.3 (2023): 531-546.

    with Tyne Daile Sumner. “Identity Is Cruel: Capital, Gimmick, and Surveillance in Australian Post-diasporic Short Story.” Australian Humanities Review. 69. (2021): 1-19.

    “Punishment and Pedagogy: Casual Teaching Under Techno-capitalism.” Australian Humanities Review. 68. (2021). 70-76.

    “Peter Carey’s Archive and the Australian Literary Field.” JASAL. 17.2 (2017): 1-8.

    “Jack Maggs and Peter Carey’s Fiction as a World.” Antipodes. 31.2 (2017): 326-341.

    “Antipodeanism and Charles Dickens’ Imperialist Undertakings in Depicting Australia.” Manusya. 14.2 (2011): 24-35.

  • Longform Essays

    “The Trouble of Middle Eastern Literature.” Sydney Review of Books. (28 November 2019). https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essay/trouble-of-middle-eastern-literature/Externer Link.

    “Reflections of an Outsider: Eulogy for an Unseen Refugee.” Inquire: Journal of Comparative Literature. 4.1 (2014).

  • Fiction Reviews

    “Algorithm Mood.” Review of Ennis Ennis Cehic’s Sadvertising. Sydney Review of Books. May 2022. 

    “This New Writing.” Review of Josephine Rowe’s On Beverly Farmer.” Sydney Review of Books. October 2020.

     “Nirvana at the Consulting Company”. Review of Bem Le Hunte’s Elephants with Headlights. Sydney Review of Books. October 2020.

    “Loving Polyamory.” Review of Paul Dalgano’s Poly. The Monthly. September 2020.

    “Forming Fatigue.” Review of Yumna Kassab’s The House of Youssef. Sydney Review of Books. June 2020.

    “Transnodal.” Review of Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace 1840s–1940s by David Carter and Roger Osborne. Australian Book Review. August 2019, No. 413: 48.

    “On Oxytocin.” Review of Sonia Orchard’s Into the Fire. Australian Book Review. May 2019, No. 411: 37.

  • Literary Journalism

    with Paul Rae. “Behrouz Boochani’s literary prize cements his status as an Australian writer.” The Conversation. 1 Feb 2019. https://theconversation.com/behrouz-boochanis-literary-prize-cements-his-status-as-an-australian-writer-110986Externer Link.

  • Interviews with Authors

    “‘Back to the Future. Keyvan Allahyari in Conversation with Chris Flynn.” Chicago Review of Books. (April 2020). https://chireviewofbooks.com/2020/04/28/back-to-the-future-in-mammoth/Externer Link.

     “Interview – Keyvan Allahyari and Dominic Smith in Conversation.” Antipodes. 31.1 (2017): 151-157.

My teaching reflects a broad set of notions in global Anglophone literatures, that is the national, regional, and diasporic geographies outside of Great Britain and the United States, such as Asia-Pacific, the Caribbean, and the African continent, among others.

  • Winter Semester 2025/2026
    • Sovereign Literatures: Writing Global Indigeneity
    • The Island and the Novel
  • Summer Semester 2025
    • Pacific Literatures in Context
    • Poetic of Pollutions: Literature and Environmental Waste  
  • Winter Semester 2024/2025
    • Sovereign Literatures: Writing Global Indigeneity
    • The Island and the Novel