Associate Professor
Office: 1237 HW
Office Hours: Fridays 10am-12pm
Phone: 212.772.5170
jallre@hunter.cuny.edu

Professor Allred has been at Hunter since 2005. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, modernism, and literary theory, in addition to more specialized topics, such as “Documentary in Literature and Film,” “ABCs of Modernism,” and “Art/Work: Labor and Culture in the 20th Century US.” His proudest achievement in the classroom came recently in the form of an anonymous student comment (you know who you are): “Prof. Allred makes bad books seem good.”

Professor Allred has recently published a book, American Modernism and Depression Documentary (Oxford University Press, 2010), which surveys the uneven terrain of American modernity through the lens of photo-documentary books, including work by James Agee/Walker Evans, Richard Wright, and Erskine Caldwell/Margaret Bourke-White.  He is the recipient of several grants and awards, including the Foerster Prize (awarded annually for the best article in American Literature), a year-long fellowship at the CUNY Center for the Humanities, and a Duncan Fellowship at the Ransom Center for the Humanities.  He has published book reviews and articles on American literature, modernism, and media studies in American Literature, Arizona Quarterly, Criticism: A Quarterly for the Arts, and others.  He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled ABCs of Modernism.