Angela S. Allan

I teach modern and contemporary American literature, economic history, and popular culture in the History & Literature program at Harvard. As the Associate Director of Studies, my door is always open; please feel free to stop by with any questions about the concentration or ideas you're considering. You can reach me at allan[at]fas.harvard.edu

As a teacher and scholar, my work emphasizes the relationship between works of literature and culture and the historical conditions that surround, produce, and consume them. In my classes, my students and I seek to understand the ways that literature and history inform one another and can generate new ways of interpreting both. We also look at how different forms of media change our perceptions and reception of history, engaging popular culture, film, music, and more. Some of my favorite teaching experiences in Hist & Lit have been working with seniors writing theses on visual culture and popular media.

I received my PhD in English from Brown University and have written about the relationship between finance and literature, genre fiction, and systems of interpretation. I've also written about pop culture for The Atlantic; you can read some of my work here.