Books

Rivers of the Anthropocene, EDITED BY JASON M. KELLY, PHILIP SCARPINO, HELEN BERRY, JAMES SYVITSKI, MICHEL MEYBECK (UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, 2017)

This exciting volume presents the research of the Rivers of the Anthropocene Network , an international collaborative group of scientists, social scientists, humanists, artists, policy makers, and community organizers working to produce innovative transdisciplinary research on global freshwater systems. Featuring contributions from authors in a rich diversity of disciplines—from toxicology to archaeology to philosophy—this book is an excellent resource for students and scholars studying both freshwater systems and the Anthropocene. 

An Anthropocene Primer, Version 1.0, Edited by Jason m. Kelly and Fiona P. Mcdonald (October 2017)

An Anthropocene Primer is an innovative open access, open peer review publication that guides learners through the complex concepts and debates related to the Anthropocene, including climate change, pollution, and environmental justice. Version 1.0 of An Anthropocene Primer is hosted by the IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute as an open access book, which we are releasing during Open Access Week in October 2017. In collaboration with Indiana University Press, we are inviting the public to participate in an open peer review of the volume until February 1, 2018.

The Society of Dilettanti: Archaeology & Identity in the British Enlightenment (Yale University Press and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2009)

In 1732 a group of elite young men who had met on the grand tour formed a convivial dining club called the Society of Dilettanti. By the middle of the 18th century the Dilettanti took on an influential role in cultural matters, organizing archaeological expeditions, forming the Royal Academy and the British Museum, and ultimately becoming one of the most prominent and influential societies of the British Enlightenment.This lively and illuminating account places the group at the complex intersection of international and national discourses that shaped the British Enlightenment; thus, it sheds new light on 18th-century grand tourism, elite masculinity, sociability, aesthetics, architecture, and archaeology

FEATURED Publications

American Historical Review, August 2020

In the appendix to the French edition of his Elements of Geology in 1839, the geologist Charles Lyell introduced a new word into the scientific lexicon: “Pleistocene.” He described it as a fusion of the Greek words “pleiston” (πλεῖστος) and “kainos” (καινός)—a neologism meant to designate the most recent geological epoch. As he described it, the Pleistocene was the epoch “which has elapsed since the earth has been tenanted by man” (Lyell, Principles of Geology [1833], 3:52). Over the course of the 1830s, Lyell and his compatriot William Whewell introduced a number of new designations into the geological lexicon: the Eocene (“dawn of the new”), the Miocene (less recent), and the Pliocene (more recent).

American Historical Review, April 2017

This essay examines the limits and potentials of digital history, especially as it relates to the construction of archives and digital datasets. Through a critical reading of the sources used to create the Grand Tour Project—part of the Mapping the Republic of Letters project at Stanford University—it shows the ways in which datasets can both hide and embody hierarchies of power. This piece offers suggestions for alternative readings of the Grand Tour narrative. It ends by summarizing a series of challenges faced by historians as they contemplate best practices for creating and maintaining digital datasets in the twenty-first century.

Journal of British Studies, July 2018
Chris Otter, Alison Bashford, John L. Brooke, Fredrik Albritton Jonsson and Jason M. Kelly 

The transition into the Anthropocene is unquestionably the deepest and most profound event in recent history. While the term is only a couple of decades old, it has become hard to imagine conceptualizing the impact of human beings on the earth—the collision of human history and planetary geology—without it. But how should scholars working on British culture and history respond to the conceptual challenges of the Anthropocene? How are we supposed to combine two scales of analysis—the geological and the historical? To get our bearings, we assembled ourselves as a roundtable of scholars with significant interest in these debates.

Articles & Book Chapters

Kelly, Jason M. “The Anthropocene Family.” Rethinking the Family in Early Modern Britain. Ed. Helen Berry and Elizabeth Foyster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. In press.

Kelly, Jason M. “Corruption, Disenfranchisement, and Political Culture: The Worcester Election of 1747.” Electoral Culture, Political Media and Popular Participation in England 1715-1832. Ed. Matthew Grenby, Elaine Chalus, and Kendra Packham. Martlesham, United Kingdom: Boydell and Brewer. In press.

Kelly, Jason M. “Decadence and Decay.” Journal18: A Journal of Eighteenth-Century Art and Culture (June 2025).

Kelly, Jason M. “Introduction: Symposium on Room for the Lost Paradise.” Journal18: A Journal of Eighteenth-Century Art and Culture (June 2025).

Kelly, Jason M. “Making ‘Nature’ in the Eighteenth Century.” Aufklärung und Anthropozän. Neue Verhältnisbestimmungen von Mensch und Natur im Zeichen der anthropologischen Wende. Ed. Jürgen Overhoff und Joachim Scholz. Herausgeber: Edition Lumière Bremen. 2025.

Filippelli, Gabriel, Ivan Hicks, Gregory Druschel, Jason M. Kelly, John Shukle, Spencer Strout, Natalie Nichols, et al. “Addressing Risks of Lead in Water and Soil: Using Citizen Science and a Unique Partnership with Faith Organizations.” ENGAGE! Co-Created Knowledge Serving the City 3, no. 1 (October 2021).

Kelly, Jason M. “The Society of Dilettanti and the Study of Greek Antiquity.” The Romance of Ruins: The Search for Ancient Ionia. Ed. Ian Jenkins. London: Sir John Soane Museum, 2021.

Kelly, Jason M. and John Horan. “Archive as Pedagogy: Oral History and the Journal of the Plague Year.” Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals. 2020.

Kelly, Jason M. “Sir Francis Dashwood: Connoisseur, Collector and Traveller.” Art & the Country House. Ed. Martin Postle. London: Paul Mellon Centre for Art and Architecture, 2020.

Kelly, Jason M. “The COVID-19 Oral History Project: Some Preliminary Notes from the Field.” Oral History Review. 47, no. 2 (2020).

Kelly, Jason M. “Featured Review: Gregg Mitman, Marco Armiero, and Robert S. Emmett, editors. Future Remains: A Cabinet of Curiosities for the Anthropocene. Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet.” American Historical Review. 125, no. 3 (2020): 951-55.

Kelly, Jason M. “The End of Abundance: Water Infrastructure and the Culture of Cornucopianism.” Dilettante Army (Fall 2019).

Kelly, Jason M., and Fiona P. McDonald. “A Multimodal Approach to the Anthropocene.” American Anthropologist 120, no. 3 (2018): 583–95. 

Kelly, Jason M. “The Warburg Circle in the 1930s.” In Carole Maigné, Audrey Rieber et Céline Trautmann-Waller. "Présentation: La Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg comme laboratoire." Revue germanique internationale. 28 (2018) : 5-9.

Otter, Chris, Alison Bashford, John L. Brooke, Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, and Jason M. Kelly. “Roundtable: The Anthropocene in British History.” Journal of British Studies 57, no. 3 (2018): 568–96. 

Kelly, Jason M. “Reading the Grand Tour at a Distance: Archives and Data Sets in Digital History.” American Historical Review 122.2 (2017): 451-463. 

Kelly, Jason M. "A Classical Education: Naples and the Heart of European Culture." Seduction and Celebrity: The Spectacular Life of Emma Hamilton, ed. Quintin Colville and Kate Williams. London: National Maritime Museum and Thames and Hudson, 2016. 109-37.

Kelly, Jason M. "The Reception of Greek Architecture in Eighteenth-Century Britain." A Companion to Greek Architecture, ed. Margaret Miles. Oxford: Blackwell, 2016. 509-25.

Kelly, Jason M. "The Anthropocene and Transdisciplinarity." Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, Forum: Archaeology in the Anthropocene. 1.1 (2014): 91-96.

Kelly, Jason M. "Transdisciplinarity, Human-Nature Entanglements, and Transboundary Water Systems in the Anthropocence." The Global Water System in the Anthropocene: Challenges for Science and Governance, ed. Anik Bhaduri, Janos Bogardi, Jan Leentvaar, and Sina Marx.  Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2014. 173-82.

Yeomans, David, Jason M. Kelly, and Frank Salmon and David Yeomans, "James Stuart and the Geometry of Setting Out." Geometrical Objects: Architecture and the Mathematical Sciences 1400-1800, New Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology 38, ed. Anthony Gerbino. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2014. 281-312.

Kelly, Jason M. “British and Irish Artists in Rome during the 1730s and 1740s.” Richard Wilson and the Transformation of European Landscape Painting, ed. Martin Postle and Robin Simon. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014. 35-51. 

Hitchcock, Tim and Jason M. Kelly, "Reinventing the Academic Journal: The 'Digital Turn,' Open Access, & Peer Review." History Workshop Online (22 April 2013).

Kelly, Jason M. "Letters from a Young Painter Abroad: James Russel in Rome, 1740-1763 [Introduction and Critical Edition of the James Russel Manuscripts]." Walpole Society 74 (2012): 61-164. 

Kelly, Jason M. "Howard Zinn and the Struggle for the Microphone: History, Objectivity, and Citizenship." International Journal of Social Education, special Issue on "The Life and Work of Howard Zinn." 24.1 (2009 [2012]): 19-26.

Kelly, Jason M. "Kennington Common, the Occupy Movement & the Freedom of Assembly." History Workshop Online (3 November 2011).

Kelly, Jason M. "James 'Athenian' Stuart's Portrait of James Dawkins." The British Art Journal. 8.2 (2007): 24-25.

Kelly, Jason M. "The Portraits of Sir James Gray (c. 1708-73)."  The British Art Journal. 8.1 (2007): 15-19.

Kelly, Jason M. "Riots, Revelries, and Rumor: Libertinism and Masculine Association in Enlightenment London." Journal of British Studies. 45.4 (2006): 759–795.

Reports

Kelly, Jason M., Jason Price, Emily Leiserson, and Shonda Gladden. “Third Space Program Evaluation (2019-2022).” Arts for Learning Indianapolis. 2022.

Price, Jason, Jason M. Kelly, Emily Leiserson. “Create Indy: Arts Funding and Equity in Indianapolis.” Indianapolis: Office of the Mayor, 2020.

Kelly, Jason M. “Any Given Child 5-Year Study.” Indianapolis: Arts Council of Indianapolis, 2020.

Kelly, Jason M., Fiona P. McDonald., Elizabeth Danter. The Co-Curricular Online Arts & Cultural Programs Study for the Arts Council of Indianapolis. 2016. Available with permission from the Arts Council of Indianapolis

Wood, Elizabeth; Youngbok Hong; Mary F. Price; Kathleen Stanton-Nichols; Julie A. Hatcher; David M. Craig; Jason M. Kelly; Ross D. Silverman; Kristi L. Palmer "Public Scholarship at Indiana University-Purdue University." 2016. 

Kelly, Jason M. "Handlist Catalogue to the Dawkins Jamaican Estate Papers at Overnorton Manor, Oxfordshire." May 2009.

Kelly, Jason M. "Guide to Giovanni Battista Cipriani's Mural at Trafalgar Park, Wiltshire." June 2009.

For a copy of my CV or a full list of books, essays, reviews, and reports, please contact me at jason@jasonmkelly.com.