Prof. Ivan Callus

Prof. Ivan Callus

Prof. Ivan Callus

  B.Ed.(Hons.),B.A.(Hons.)(Lond.),M.A.,Ph.D.(Cardiff)

Professor

Room 350
Old Humanities Building (OH)
University of Malta
Msida
  +356 2340 2972
My main areas of interest are contemporary literature and literary theory. My PhD was obtained at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory at Cardiff University in 1998, following research into the cahiers d'anagrammes of Ferdinand de Saussure and their influence on literature and literary theory. Aspects of this research have since appeared in a number of journal articles, and the fascinatingly enigmatic nature of the anagrammes is something I have continued to investigate in more recent work.

I am the founding co-editor, with James Corby, of CounterText: A Journal for the Study of the Post-Literary, launched with Edinburgh University Press in 2015. The journal's focus is on literature's evolving identities and its directions in contemporary culture. It's a focus that complements another strong interest: posthumanism. With Stefan Herbrechter, I am the co-editor of the Critical Posthumanisms book series published by Brill. I am also co-director of the Critical Posthumanism Network (criticalposthumanism.net).

I have co-edited six books centring on intersections between literature and various areas of literary theory: Discipline and Practice: The (Ir)resistibility of Theory (Bucknell University Press, 2004); Post-Theory/Culture/Criticism (Rodopi, 2004); Cy-Borges: Memories of Posthumanism in the Work of Jorge Luis Borges (Bucknell University Press, 2009); Posthumanist Shakespeares (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Style in Theory: Between Literature and Philosophy (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013); European Posthumanism (Routledge, 2016). I have published various articles and book chapters on contemporary narrative, poststructuralist literary theory and comparative literature, including work which has appeared in journals like Angelaki, Arcadia, Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure, Comparative Critical Studies, CounterText, EJES, Electronic Book Review, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Parallax, Subjectivity, and Word and Text.

I am currently completing a manuscript on posthumanism and prehistory. Other current research takes in topics related to creative nonfiction, (plat)forms of contemporary narrative and the futures of literature.
  • Contemporary Fiction
  • Literary Criticism and Theory
  • Posthumanism
  • Futures of Literature
  • Comparative Literature

CALLUS, I., 2019. Literaturelessness. CounterText: A Journal for the Study of the Post-Literary, 5(1), pp. 89-113.

CALLUS, I. and LANFRANCO, S., 2018. A Different Kind of Wilderness: Decomposition and Life in Jim Crace's Being Dead. In: K. SHAW and K. AUGHTERSON, eds, Jim Crace: Into the Wilderness. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 81-94.

MILLER, J.H., CALLUS, I. and CORBY, J., 2018. The CounterText Interview: J. Hillis Miller. CounterText, 4(1), pp. 1-8.

PARKS, T. and CALLUS, I., 2018. The CounterText Interview: Tim Parks. CounterText: A Journal for the Study of the Post-Literary, 4(3), pp. 309-340.

CALLUS, I., 2017. Anagrammatology: Derrida before Saussure’s Anagram Notebooks. Word and Text, A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics, 7(01), pp. 39-68.

CALLUS, I., 2017. The CounterText Review: On the Idea of Adieu in the Poetic Now. CounterText, 3(2), pp. 259-266.

CALLUS, I., 2017. Literature, Journalism, and the Countertextual: Daphne Caruana Galizia, 1964–2017. CounterText, 3(3), pp. 414-422.

GRIMA, A. and CALLUS, I., 2017. Irreverent and Inventive Mamo. CounterText, 3(3), pp. 392-395.

CALLUS, I., 2016. Drop the ‘Proto-’: Posthumanism and Prefiguration. Word and Text, A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics, 6(1), pp. 165-171.

CALLUS, I., 2016. In Praise of Insularity: Tone, Autonomy and Critical Practice. In: K. DAUTEL and K. SCHÖDEL, eds, Insularity: Representations and Constructions of Small Worlds. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, pp. 31-42.

HERBRECHTER, S., CALLUS, I. and ROSSINI, M., eds, 2016. European Posthumanism. London; New York: Routledge.

STRICKLAND, S., AQUILINA, M. and CALLUS, I., 2016. The Counter Text Interview: Stephanie Strickland. CounterText, 2(2), pp. 113-129.

CALLUS, I., 2015. Constructed Worlds: Posthumanism in Film, Television and Other Cosmopoietic Media. In: M. HAUSKELLER, T.D. PHILBECK and C.D. CARBONELL, eds, Palgrave Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Television. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 182-191.

CALLUS, I., 2015. Friend or Country: Narratives of Impossible Choice in Sophocles, E. M. Forster, and Beyond. Merope, XIV(61-62), pp. 193-231.

CALLUS, I., 2015. Literature in Our Time, or, Loving Literature to Bits. CounterText: A Journal for the Study of the Post-Literary, 1(2), pp. 232-269.

CALLUS, I., 2015. The Non-Relation of Non-Relation: The Scale and Object of Deconstruction and Art Now. Parallax, 21(1), pp. 98-121.

MCCARTHY, T., CORBY, J. and CALLUS, I., 2015. The CounterText Interview: Tom McCarthy. CounterText, 1(2), pp. 135-153.

CALLUS, I., 2014. Exhausted replenishment: experimental fiction and the decomposition of literature. Word and Text, A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics, 4(01), pp. 116-135.

CALLUS, I., HERBRECHTER, S. and ROSSINI, M., 2014. Introduction: Dis/Locating Posthumanism in European Literary and Cultural Traditions. European Journal of English Studies, 18(2), pp. 103-120.

CALLUS, I., 2013. Mediocrity, at Work and in Jest. Word and Text, A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics, (1), pp. 25-40.

CALLUS, I., 2013. Posthumanist Macbeth. In: S. SILLARS, ed, The Shakespearean International Yearbook Vol. 13. New York and Abingdon, Oxford: Routledge, pp. 159-180.

CALLUS, I., 2012. ‘This?’: Posthumanism and the Graveyard Scene in Hamlet. In: S. HERBRECHTER and I. CALLUS, eds, Posthumanist Shakespeares. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 213-237.

CALLUS, I., 2012. “There is great unrest”: Some Reflections On Emotion And Memory in Julian Barnes’s Nothing To Be Frightened Of and The Sense Of An Ending. Prague Journal of English Studies, 1(1), pp. 55-70.

CALLUS, I., 2012. Reclusiveness and posthumanist subjectivity. Subjectivity, 5(3), pp. 290-311.

CALLUS, I., HERBRECHTER, S. and ROSSINI, M., 2012. Introduction: Posthuman Subjectivities, or, Coming after the Subject ... Subjectivity, 5(3), pp. 241-264.

HERBRECHTER, S. and CALLUS, I., eds, 2012. Posthumanist Shakespeares. Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

CALLUS, I., 2011. Criticism Limited: Singularities and Pluralities of Constraint. Word and Text, A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics, 1(2), pp. 25-39.

CALLUS, I., 2011. Incongruity and Scale: The Challenge of Discernment in Maltese Literature, or, Should the Other Bother? How a Minor Literature Might Matter. https://www.lit-across-frontiers.org/transcript/incongruity-and-scale-the-challenge-of-discernment-in-maltese-literature-by-ivan-callus/ edn. Aberystwyth: Literature across Frontiers.

CALLUS, I. and HERBRECHTER, S., 2011. Humanity Without Itself. Towards a New Literary Humanism. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 143-158.

CALLEJA, G. and CALLUS, I., 2010. Game Studies. In: B. CLARKE and M. ROSSINI, eds, The Routledge Companion To Literature and Science. New York and London: Routledge, pp. 323-334.

CALLUS, I. and LAURI-LUCENTE, G., 2010. Filming Oblivion: Posthuman Experience in Alexander Sokurov and Maurice Blanchot. Convegno Internazionale di Studi sul Cinema, 16, pp. 423-432.

CALLUS, I., 2009. Maltese literature in the language of the other: a case study in minority literatures' pursuit of'majority'. Acta Scientiarum.Language and Culture, 31(1), pp. 31-40.

CALLUS, I., 2009. Translating Style: Tim Parks and the Tradition of Anglo-Italian Literary Relations. Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies, 10, pp. 199-209.

HERBRECHTER, S. and CALLUS, I., 2008. What Is a Posthumanist Reading? Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 13(1), pp. 95-111.

CALLUS, I. and HERBRECHTER, S., 2007. Critical posthumanism, or, the inventio of a posthumanism without technology. Subject Matters, 3(4.1), pp. 15-29.

HERBRECHTER, S. and CALLUS, I., 2007. The Grammar of Deconstruction. In: A. WEINER and S.M. WORTHAM, eds, Encountering Derrida: Legacies and Futures of Deconstruction. London and New York: Continuum, pp. 137-151.

HERBRECHTER, S. and CALLUS, I., 2007. Posthumanism in the Work of Jorge Luis Borges. In: C. TAYLOR and T. PITMAN, eds, Latin American Cyberculture and Cyberliterature. Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, pp. 179-193.

CALLUS, I., 2004. Comparatism and (Auto)thanatography: Death and Mourning in Blanchot, Derrida, and Tim Parks. Comparative Critical Studies, 1(3), pp. 337-358.

HERBRECHTER, S. and CALLUS, I., 2004. The Latecoming of the Posthuman, or, Why “We” Do the Apocalypse Differently,“Now”. Reconstruction: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Culture, 4(3),.

CALLUS, I., 2003. ‘“So Who’s the Fetishist, Then?”: Language and Idiom in Derridean Hauntology and Marxist (De)ontology’. In: C. VASSALLO and C. THAKE VASSALLO, eds, The Communist Manifesto: Karl Marx's Legacy to Humanity. Msida: University of Malta Press, pp. 89-95.

CALLUS, I., 2002. A Chronological and Annotated Bibliography of Works Referring to Ferdinand de Saussure's Anagram Notebooks. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure, (55), pp. 269-295.

CALLUS, I., 2002. Jalonnante and parathlipse: encountering new terminology in Ferdinand de Saussure's researches into anagrams. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure, (55), pp. 169-202.

CALLUS, I. and BORG, R., 2001. Deconstruction and the undoing of diplomacy: a case study involving the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations. In: J. KURBALIJA and H. SLAVIK, eds, Language and Diplomacy. Msida: University of Malta, pp. 233-260.

CALLUS, I., 2000. Reading Things Differently Abroad: Encounters Between European Criticism and the Contemporary British Novel. New Comparison: A Journal of Comparative and General Literary Studies, 30, pp. 121-133.

CALLUS, I., 1999. How the Other Compares: Difference and the Practice of Comparative Literature. Arcadia, 34(2), pp. 366.

CALLUS, I., 1998-1999. Cover to Cover: Paratextual Play in Milorad Pavić's The Dictionary of the Khazars. Electronic Book Review, 8(Winter), pp. https://www.altx.com/ebr/ebr8/8callus.htm.

  • DOC6025 - Getting Published: Preparing the Book Proposal
  • ENG2022 - Theories of Literature 2: Literature Criticism Theory - Then and Now
  • ENG2066 - Current Debates in Literary Theory
  • ENG2122 - Theories of Literature 2: Literature Criticism Theory - Then and Now (Part 1)
  • ENG3051 - Synoptic Study-Unit 1: Ideas and Concepts
  • ENG3052 - Synoptic Study-Unit 2: Readings, Interpretations, Applications
  • ENG3072 - Contemporary Fiction
  • ENG3113 - Creative Writing: Undergraduate Tutorials and Mentoring
  • ENG3172 - Contemporary American Narrative
  • ENG3272 - Contemporary British Narrative
  • ENG5073 - Putting Modernism Together
  • ENG5075 - Critical and Creative Writing
  • ENG5076 - Hamlets
  • ENG5078 - In Our Time: The Novel View
  • ENG5080 - The Post-Literary
  • ENG5100 - Critical Debates in Literary Studies
  • ENG5102 - Writing the Mediterranean 2
  • ENG5119 - Creative Writing: Postgraduate Tutorials and Mentoring
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