CURRICULUM VITAE (abridged)
Current Position
Associate Professor, Department of English, Rutgers University.
Prior Appointments
Associate Professor, Department of English, Georgetown University, 2008-2018.
Director, Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Georgetown University, 2009-2012.
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Georgetown University, 2004-2008.
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Hamilton College, 2000-2004.
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of English, Holy Cross College, 1999-2000.
Awards, Fellowships, and Grants
Andrew H Mellon Foundation, Sawyer Seminar grantee/co-director for “Approaching the Anthropocene: Global Culture and Planetary Change,” Georgetown University, 2016-18.
David R. Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future Fellowship, Cornell University Society for the Humanities, 2014-15.
Senior Fellowship, Georgetown University, spring 2015.
NEH Residential Fellowship, Huntington Library, 2012-13.
MLA Crompton-Noll Award for best essay in lesbian/gay studies, 2012.
Distinguished Achievement in Research Award, Georgetown University, 2009.
Modern Language Association Prize for a First Book, 2008.
Honorable mention, Crompton-Noll Award for best essay in lesbian/gay studies, 2007.
National Humanities Center Summer Institute in Literary Studies Fellowship, July 2005.
Tanner Humanities Center Fellowship, University of Utah, 2003-04.
Books and Journal Issues
Monographs:
Arranging Grief: Sacred Time and the Body in Nineteenth-Century America. New York University Press (Sexual Cultures series), 2007. Winner of the Modern Language Association’s Prize for a First Book, December 2008.
How the Earth Feels: Geological Fantasy in the Nineteenth Century U.S. In progress.
Time and Again: The Affective Circuits of Spirit Photography. In progress.
Edited collections and journal issues:
“Afterlives of Nineteenth-Century American Racism,” forum for J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists 6:1, spring 2018.
“Queer Inhumanisms.” Special double issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, co-edited with Mel Y. Chen. Vol. 22 nos. 2-3, spring/summer 2015.
Unsettled States: Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies. Essay collection, co-edited with Ivy G. Wilson, NYU Press, 2014.
Social Text Periscope dossier on Cruel Optimism and conversation with author Lauren Berlant, 2013. http://www.socialtextjournal.org/periscope/cruel-optimism/
Essays and Book Chapters
“Ghosts of Another Time: Spiritualism, Photography, Enchantment,” in Christopher Castiglia and Susan Gillman, eds., Neither the Time nor the Place: Today’s Nineteenth Century, University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming 2019.
“Queer Temporalities and the Play of Mourning,” in Siobhan B. Somerville, ed, Cambridge Companion to Queer Studies, forthcoming 2019.
“Queer Inhumanisms Revisited” (co-authored with Mel Y. Chen), GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, forthcoming 2019.
“The Memory of Water,” in Tanja Widmann and Tonio Kroeger, eds, Post-Apocalyptic Realism, Museum Brandhorst Publications, forthcoming 2019.
“The Anthropocene, 1492-???? (or, I Wish I Knew How to Quit You),” in Cody Marrs and Christopher Hager, eds., Timelines of American Literature, Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming 2018.
Introduction to “Afterlives of Nineteenth-Century American Racism,” J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists 6:1, spring 2018.
“Romancing the Trace: Edward Hitchcock’s Speculative Ichnology,” in Tobias Menely and Jesse Oak Taylor, eds., Anthropocene Reading: Literary History in Geologic Times, Penn State University Press, 2017.
“Touching Seeing,” American Literary History 28:1, spring 2016.
“Speaking Substances: Rock,” Los Angeles Review of Books, April 12, 2016. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/speaking-substances-rock/
“How the Earth Feels: Interview,” Transatlantica: Revue d’études américaines, Special issue on Deep Time. Winter 2015. https://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/7362
“Has the Queer Ever Been Human?” (co-authored with Mel Y. Chen), introduction to “Queer Inhumanisms.” Special double issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, co-edited with Mel Y. Chen. 22:2-3, spring/summer 2015.
“Tracking Prehistory.” J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, forum on monstrosity, ed. John Lardas Modern. Spring 2015.
"The Inhuman Anthropocene," Avidly/Los Angeles Review of Books, March 22, 2015. http://avidly.lareviewofbooks.org/2015/03/22/the-inhuman-anthropocene/
“Sacred Theories of Earth: Matters of Spirit in William and Elizabeth Denton’s The Soul of Things.” American Literature 86:4, special issue, “After the Post-Secular.” December 2014.
"Introduction: On Moving Ground," in Unsettled States: Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies, co-edited with Ivy G. Wilson (NYU Press, 2014).
“Unrealized: The Queer Time of The Hermaphrodite,” in Gary Williams and Renée Bergland, eds., Philosophies of Sex: Essays on The Hermaphrodite (Ohio State University Press, 2012).
“Nostalgia for an Age Yet to Come: Velvet Goldmine’s Queer Archive,” in E.L. McCallum and Mikko Tuhkanen, eds., Queer Times, Queer Becomings (SUNY Press, 2011). Winner, MLA Crompton-Noll Award, 2012.
“Geological Fantasies, Haunting Anachronies: Eros, Time, and History in Harriet Prescott Spofford’s ‘The Amber Gods,’” ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 55:3-4, Special Issue, “Come Again?” December 2009.
“Coming Around Again: The Queer Momentum of Far from Heaven,” GLQ 13:2-3 (Spring/Summer 2007), special issue on “Queer Temporalities,” ed. Elizabeth Freeman, pp. 249-72. Honorable mention, MLA Crompton-Noll Award, 2007.
“Representative Mournfulness: Nation and Race in the Time of Lincoln,” in Lucy E. Frank, ed., Representations of Death in Nineteenth Century US Writing and Culture (Ashgate Press, 2007).
“Love’s Measures,” contribution to roundtable on Brokeback Mountain, ed. Scott Herring, GLQ 13:1 (Winter 2006).
“Melville’s Untimely History: ‘Benito Cereno’ as Counter-Monumental Narrative,” Arizona Quarterly 60:3 (Fall 2004).
“Voicing Removal: Mourning (as) History in Catherine Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie,” The Western Humanities Review 58:2 (Fall 2004). Reprinted in Nineteenth Century Literary Criticism: 19th Century American Women Social Activists (1): Indian Rights (Gale, forthcoming.)
“Passing Shadows: Melancholy Nationality and Black Publicity in Pauline E. Hopkins’s Of One Blood,” in David Eng and David Kazanjian, eds., Loss: The Psychic and Social Contexts of Melancholia (University of California Press, 2003).
“Invalid Relations: Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady,” The Henry James Review 23:2 (May 2002).
“'Perverse Nature': Edgar Huntly and the Novel's Reproductive Disorders,” American Literature 70:1 (March 1998).
“This is not religion, this is terrorism!” Documents 4/5 (1994). Reprinted in Fillip 17 (Fall 2012).
Other Writing
"MLA: Don't Capitulate. Advocate." Co-author. Inside Higher Education, June 24, 2014. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2014/06/24/essay-critiques-mla-report-graduate-education
"Trigger Warnings are Flawed." Co-author. Inside Higher Education, May 29, 2014. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2014/05/29/essay-faculty-members-about-why-they-will-not-use-trigger-warnings
“Citizenship in Flames.” In Media Res, theme week, “Queer Citizenship,” March 13, 2009. http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2009/03/12/citizenship-flames
Invited Talks, Presentations, and Seminars
“The End of the World as We Knew It,” lecture for Unnatural Disasters: Climate Change and the Limits of the Knowable, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, September 15, 2018.
“That Sinking Feeling,” talk for Stone Walks Lancaster: Militarisms, Migration, and Speculative Geology, Lancaster, PA, August 10, 2018.
“Convulsive Affects,” spotlight lecture for Capacious: Affect Inquiry/Making Space, Lancaster, PA, August 10, 2018.
“Haunting,” seminar for Capacious: Affect Inquiry/Making Space, Lancaster, PA, August 9, 2018.
“Melville and the Non-Human,” seminar co-leader, International Melville Society Conference, London, England, June 30, 2017.
“Love and Death in the Anthropocene: Affect, Genre, Moby-Dick,” Futures of American Studies Institute, Dartmouth College, June 24, 2017; University of California at Davis, May 1, 2017.
“The Memory of Water,” for Post-Apocalyptic Realism symposium, Museum Brandhorst, Munich, Germany, March 17, 2017.
“Earthquakes for Boys,” Queer Inhumanisms symposium, Center for Sexual Diversity Studies, University of Toronto, February 10, 2017.
“Love and Death in the Anthropocene: Geologic Time, Genre, Moby-Dick,” Beaver Brook Lecture in American Literature and Environmental Studies, Connecticut College Department of English, April 21, 2016.
“Animating Entanglements,” presentation and seminar with Mel Y. Chen, Dartmouth College Gender Research Institute, Friday, April 15, 2016.
“Spirit Friends,” Duke University Program in Women’s Studies, March 31, 2016.
“Beyond Thoreau: Re-imagining Environmental Pedagogy,” seminar co-directed with Jennifer James, C19: The Society for 19th Century Americanists Conference, Penn State University, March 19, 2016.
“Love and Death in the Anthropocene: Geologic Time, Genre, Moby-Dick,” Keynote, Personhood conference, Queens College Department of English, December 3, 2015.
“Love and Death in the Anthropocene: Geologic Time, Genre, Moby-Dick,” Local Americanists Speaker Series, University of Maryland Department of English, December 1, 2015.
“Love and Death in the Anthropocene.” Keynote, Climate Literacies Symposium, Oakland University, October 15, 2015.
“Queer Feminist Matters,” Conversation with Ann Cvetkovich, LGBT Studies, Cornell University, April 22, 2015.
“What the Earth Remembers,” Contested Global Landscapes Project Conference, Institute for the Social Sciences, Cornell University, April 9, 2015.
“Romancing the Trace: Edward Hitchcock's Speculative Ichnology,” Department of English, Johns Hopkins University, March 26, 2015.
“Thinking in the Anthropocene,” roundtable, Lannan Symposium: In Nature's Wake: The Art and Politics of the Environmental Crisis, Georgetown University, March 25, 2015.
“Romancing the Trace: Edward Hitchcock's Speculative Ichnology,” Society for the Humanities/Atkinson Center Annual Lecture on Sustainable Futures, Cornell University, March 2, 2015.
“Time and Again: The Circuits of Spirit Photography,” Circuit, Current, Connection Symposium, Penn State, Center for American Literary Studies, February 27, 2015.
“Romancing the Trace: Edward Hitchcock's Speculative Ichnology,” SUNY Albany, Department of English, February 25, 2015.
“Geo-Testimonial in the Anthropocene,” New Matters and Queer Life Symposium, Yale University, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, January 30, 2015.
“How the Earth Feels: Geo-Affect in Times of Crisis,” Cornell University, Society for the Humanities, October 31, 2014.
“Romancing the Trace: Ichnology, Aesthetics and Agency, 1835-1860,” University of Toronto Affect Seminar, October 24, 2014.
“On Moving Ground: The Unsettled States of American Studies,” Northwestern University, October 17, 2014.
“Romancing the Trace: Ichnology, Aesthetics and Agency, 1835-1860,” Rutgers University Americanist Seminar, May 1, 2014.
“Romancing the Trace: Ichnology and Affect, 1835-1860,” Columbia University American Studies Seminar, February 4, 2014.
“How the Earth Feels: Geological Fantasy and the Queer Nonhuman,” University of Southern California, October 17, 2013.
“Time and Again: The Circuits of Spirit Photography,” University of California-Irvine, May 30, 2013.
“Sacred Theories of Earth, or, What It’s Like to Channel a Thing,” University of Wisconsin-Madison, April 11, 2013; Columbia University, March 29, 2013.
“Sacramental Geology,” University of California-Berkeley, April 3, 2013.
“Earthiness, Enchantment, Exuberance,” Johns Hopkins University, November 2, 2012.
“The Erotics of Objects: Reading, Sex, ‘A New England Nun,’ English Department Americanist Colloquium, University of California-Los Angeles, October 11, 2012.
“The Way We Read Sex Now,” Pomona College, March 2, 2012.
“Touching Spirits,” keynote address, George Washington University Graduate English Colloquium, February 10, 2012.
“Feminism without Humans,” Futures Seminar, Program for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality , Johns Hopkins University, December 8, 2011.
“Spirits That Matter, or, the Return of the Ghost,” Pomona College, October 13, 2011.
“Spirits That Matter: Spiritualism, Photography and the History of Worlds,” Americanist Colloquium, Yale University, September 29, 2011.
“The Ghostly Turn,” keynote address, “Critical Junctures: America and its Crises,” Chesapeake Area American Studies Association conference, George Mason University, April 2, 2011.
“The Politics of (Queer) Grief,” Hamilton College, November 8, 2010.
“Touching, Clinging, Haunting, Worlding: On the Spirit Photograph,” keynote address, “Death and Representation,” University of Rochester, March 26, 2010; invited talk, Haverford College, March 27, 2010; Bowdoin College, April 30, 2010; Cornell University, October 1, 2010; Wellesley College, November 2, 2010.
Conference Presentations
“Melancholia,” for “Our Secular Concepts,” American Comparative Literature Association Convention, Los Angeles, California, March 31, 2018.
“Indian Underground: Geological Fantasy and Settler Colonialism,” for “The Subterranean Nineteenth Century,” Climate, C19: The Society for 19th Century Americanists Biennial Conference, Albuquerque, NM, March 24, 2018.
Chair, “Other Humans,” C19: The Society for 19th Century Americanists Biennial Conference, Albuquerque, NM, March 24, 2018.
“The Memory of Water,” for “Political Disappointment,” Modern Language Association Convention, New York, NY, January 5, 2018.
“I Wish I Knew How to Quit You,” for “Anthropocene Reading,” roundtable, Modern Language Association Convention, New York, NY, January 4, 2018.
“Earthquakes for Boys,” for “Ecological Catastrophe, Past and Present,” roundtable, Modern Language Association Convention, Philadelphia, PA, January 6, 2017.
“Extinction,” for “Unsettling? The Field of C19 Studies: A Roundtable,” Unsettling, C19: The Society for 19th Century Americanists Biennial Conference, Penn State University, March 19, 2016.
Chair, “Queer History and the Ontological Turn,” Modern Language Association Convention, Austin, TX, January 9, 2016.
Chair, “Afterlives of Nineteenth-Century American Racism,” Modern Language Association Convention, Austin, TX, January 9, 2016.
“Love and Death in the Anthropocene,” for “Forms and Fantasies of Annihilation,” American Studies Association Convention, Toronto, ON, October 8, 2015.
“Rocks,” for “Speaking Substances: Media for the Anthropocene,” Modern Language Association Convention, January 8, 2015.
“Fossils,” for “Enchanted Objects,” roundtable, Commons, C19: The Society of Nineteenth Century Americanists Biennial conference, Chapel Hill, NC, March 14, 2014.
Chair, “Here and Now: The Critical Possibilities of the Textured Present,” American Studies Association Convention, Washington, DC, November 23, 2013.
“Stuff White People Like,” for New Materialisms, Futurity, Speculative Realisms plenary session, American Studies Association Convention, San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 16, 2012.
“Sacred Theories of Earth, or, Getting Your Rocks Off,” for “Nonsecular Embodiments in Antebellum America,” Prospects: A New Century, C19: The Society of Nineteenth Century Americanists Biennial Conference, Berkeley, CA, April 13, 2012.
“Turning to Stone,” for Affective Histories, Critical Transformations session, American Studies Association Convention, Baltimore, MD, October 21, 2011.
“Touching the Spirit Photograph,” for “The Spectral and the Spectacular,” Imagining: A New Century, C19: The Society of Nineteenth Century Americanists Inaugural Conference, Penn State University, May 23, 2010.
“Sex and Time,” for “Time after History,” Modern Language Association Convention, Philadelphia, PA, December 29, 2009.
Professional Service
Member, Editorial Collective, Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, 2018-present.
Editorial Advisory Board, Salvaging the Anthropocene (book series), West Virginia University Press, 2018-present.
Editorial Board, American Literature, 2016-2018.
Selection Committee, Modern Language Association Prize for a First Book, 2014-2016.
Executive Committee, MLA Division on Nineteenth-Century American Literature, 2013-2018.
Humanities Review editor, GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies, 2011-18.
C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists: Program Committee, 2010-2012; Advisory Board, 2008-present.
Alan Bray Book Award Committee member, GL/Q Caucus of the Modern Language Association, 2009 and 2012.
External Reviewer, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, Fairfield University, spring 2012.
Chesapeake Area American Studies Association, Board Member, 2011-2013.
Chair, Michael Lynch Service Award Committee, GL/Q Caucus of the Modern Language Association, 2007-2008.
DC Queer Studies Consortium, founder and coordinator, 2007-2010.
Associate Professor, Department of English, Rutgers University.
Prior Appointments
Associate Professor, Department of English, Georgetown University, 2008-2018.
Director, Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Georgetown University, 2009-2012.
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Georgetown University, 2004-2008.
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Hamilton College, 2000-2004.
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of English, Holy Cross College, 1999-2000.
Awards, Fellowships, and Grants
Andrew H Mellon Foundation, Sawyer Seminar grantee/co-director for “Approaching the Anthropocene: Global Culture and Planetary Change,” Georgetown University, 2016-18.
David R. Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future Fellowship, Cornell University Society for the Humanities, 2014-15.
Senior Fellowship, Georgetown University, spring 2015.
NEH Residential Fellowship, Huntington Library, 2012-13.
MLA Crompton-Noll Award for best essay in lesbian/gay studies, 2012.
Distinguished Achievement in Research Award, Georgetown University, 2009.
Modern Language Association Prize for a First Book, 2008.
Honorable mention, Crompton-Noll Award for best essay in lesbian/gay studies, 2007.
National Humanities Center Summer Institute in Literary Studies Fellowship, July 2005.
Tanner Humanities Center Fellowship, University of Utah, 2003-04.
Books and Journal Issues
Monographs:
Arranging Grief: Sacred Time and the Body in Nineteenth-Century America. New York University Press (Sexual Cultures series), 2007. Winner of the Modern Language Association’s Prize for a First Book, December 2008.
How the Earth Feels: Geological Fantasy in the Nineteenth Century U.S. In progress.
Time and Again: The Affective Circuits of Spirit Photography. In progress.
Edited collections and journal issues:
“Afterlives of Nineteenth-Century American Racism,” forum for J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists 6:1, spring 2018.
“Queer Inhumanisms.” Special double issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, co-edited with Mel Y. Chen. Vol. 22 nos. 2-3, spring/summer 2015.
Unsettled States: Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies. Essay collection, co-edited with Ivy G. Wilson, NYU Press, 2014.
Social Text Periscope dossier on Cruel Optimism and conversation with author Lauren Berlant, 2013. http://www.socialtextjournal.org/periscope/cruel-optimism/
Essays and Book Chapters
“Ghosts of Another Time: Spiritualism, Photography, Enchantment,” in Christopher Castiglia and Susan Gillman, eds., Neither the Time nor the Place: Today’s Nineteenth Century, University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming 2019.
“Queer Temporalities and the Play of Mourning,” in Siobhan B. Somerville, ed, Cambridge Companion to Queer Studies, forthcoming 2019.
“Queer Inhumanisms Revisited” (co-authored with Mel Y. Chen), GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, forthcoming 2019.
“The Memory of Water,” in Tanja Widmann and Tonio Kroeger, eds, Post-Apocalyptic Realism, Museum Brandhorst Publications, forthcoming 2019.
“The Anthropocene, 1492-???? (or, I Wish I Knew How to Quit You),” in Cody Marrs and Christopher Hager, eds., Timelines of American Literature, Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming 2018.
Introduction to “Afterlives of Nineteenth-Century American Racism,” J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists 6:1, spring 2018.
“Romancing the Trace: Edward Hitchcock’s Speculative Ichnology,” in Tobias Menely and Jesse Oak Taylor, eds., Anthropocene Reading: Literary History in Geologic Times, Penn State University Press, 2017.
“Touching Seeing,” American Literary History 28:1, spring 2016.
“Speaking Substances: Rock,” Los Angeles Review of Books, April 12, 2016. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/speaking-substances-rock/
“How the Earth Feels: Interview,” Transatlantica: Revue d’études américaines, Special issue on Deep Time. Winter 2015. https://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/7362
“Has the Queer Ever Been Human?” (co-authored with Mel Y. Chen), introduction to “Queer Inhumanisms.” Special double issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, co-edited with Mel Y. Chen. 22:2-3, spring/summer 2015.
“Tracking Prehistory.” J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, forum on monstrosity, ed. John Lardas Modern. Spring 2015.
"The Inhuman Anthropocene," Avidly/Los Angeles Review of Books, March 22, 2015. http://avidly.lareviewofbooks.org/2015/03/22/the-inhuman-anthropocene/
“Sacred Theories of Earth: Matters of Spirit in William and Elizabeth Denton’s The Soul of Things.” American Literature 86:4, special issue, “After the Post-Secular.” December 2014.
"Introduction: On Moving Ground," in Unsettled States: Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies, co-edited with Ivy G. Wilson (NYU Press, 2014).
“Unrealized: The Queer Time of The Hermaphrodite,” in Gary Williams and Renée Bergland, eds., Philosophies of Sex: Essays on The Hermaphrodite (Ohio State University Press, 2012).
“Nostalgia for an Age Yet to Come: Velvet Goldmine’s Queer Archive,” in E.L. McCallum and Mikko Tuhkanen, eds., Queer Times, Queer Becomings (SUNY Press, 2011). Winner, MLA Crompton-Noll Award, 2012.
“Geological Fantasies, Haunting Anachronies: Eros, Time, and History in Harriet Prescott Spofford’s ‘The Amber Gods,’” ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 55:3-4, Special Issue, “Come Again?” December 2009.
“Coming Around Again: The Queer Momentum of Far from Heaven,” GLQ 13:2-3 (Spring/Summer 2007), special issue on “Queer Temporalities,” ed. Elizabeth Freeman, pp. 249-72. Honorable mention, MLA Crompton-Noll Award, 2007.
“Representative Mournfulness: Nation and Race in the Time of Lincoln,” in Lucy E. Frank, ed., Representations of Death in Nineteenth Century US Writing and Culture (Ashgate Press, 2007).
“Love’s Measures,” contribution to roundtable on Brokeback Mountain, ed. Scott Herring, GLQ 13:1 (Winter 2006).
“Melville’s Untimely History: ‘Benito Cereno’ as Counter-Monumental Narrative,” Arizona Quarterly 60:3 (Fall 2004).
“Voicing Removal: Mourning (as) History in Catherine Maria Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie,” The Western Humanities Review 58:2 (Fall 2004). Reprinted in Nineteenth Century Literary Criticism: 19th Century American Women Social Activists (1): Indian Rights (Gale, forthcoming.)
“Passing Shadows: Melancholy Nationality and Black Publicity in Pauline E. Hopkins’s Of One Blood,” in David Eng and David Kazanjian, eds., Loss: The Psychic and Social Contexts of Melancholia (University of California Press, 2003).
“Invalid Relations: Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady,” The Henry James Review 23:2 (May 2002).
“'Perverse Nature': Edgar Huntly and the Novel's Reproductive Disorders,” American Literature 70:1 (March 1998).
“This is not religion, this is terrorism!” Documents 4/5 (1994). Reprinted in Fillip 17 (Fall 2012).
Other Writing
"MLA: Don't Capitulate. Advocate." Co-author. Inside Higher Education, June 24, 2014. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2014/06/24/essay-critiques-mla-report-graduate-education
"Trigger Warnings are Flawed." Co-author. Inside Higher Education, May 29, 2014. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2014/05/29/essay-faculty-members-about-why-they-will-not-use-trigger-warnings
“Citizenship in Flames.” In Media Res, theme week, “Queer Citizenship,” March 13, 2009. http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2009/03/12/citizenship-flames
Invited Talks, Presentations, and Seminars
“The End of the World as We Knew It,” lecture for Unnatural Disasters: Climate Change and the Limits of the Knowable, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, September 15, 2018.
“That Sinking Feeling,” talk for Stone Walks Lancaster: Militarisms, Migration, and Speculative Geology, Lancaster, PA, August 10, 2018.
“Convulsive Affects,” spotlight lecture for Capacious: Affect Inquiry/Making Space, Lancaster, PA, August 10, 2018.
“Haunting,” seminar for Capacious: Affect Inquiry/Making Space, Lancaster, PA, August 9, 2018.
“Melville and the Non-Human,” seminar co-leader, International Melville Society Conference, London, England, June 30, 2017.
“Love and Death in the Anthropocene: Affect, Genre, Moby-Dick,” Futures of American Studies Institute, Dartmouth College, June 24, 2017; University of California at Davis, May 1, 2017.
“The Memory of Water,” for Post-Apocalyptic Realism symposium, Museum Brandhorst, Munich, Germany, March 17, 2017.
“Earthquakes for Boys,” Queer Inhumanisms symposium, Center for Sexual Diversity Studies, University of Toronto, February 10, 2017.
“Love and Death in the Anthropocene: Geologic Time, Genre, Moby-Dick,” Beaver Brook Lecture in American Literature and Environmental Studies, Connecticut College Department of English, April 21, 2016.
“Animating Entanglements,” presentation and seminar with Mel Y. Chen, Dartmouth College Gender Research Institute, Friday, April 15, 2016.
“Spirit Friends,” Duke University Program in Women’s Studies, March 31, 2016.
“Beyond Thoreau: Re-imagining Environmental Pedagogy,” seminar co-directed with Jennifer James, C19: The Society for 19th Century Americanists Conference, Penn State University, March 19, 2016.
“Love and Death in the Anthropocene: Geologic Time, Genre, Moby-Dick,” Keynote, Personhood conference, Queens College Department of English, December 3, 2015.
“Love and Death in the Anthropocene: Geologic Time, Genre, Moby-Dick,” Local Americanists Speaker Series, University of Maryland Department of English, December 1, 2015.
“Love and Death in the Anthropocene.” Keynote, Climate Literacies Symposium, Oakland University, October 15, 2015.
“Queer Feminist Matters,” Conversation with Ann Cvetkovich, LGBT Studies, Cornell University, April 22, 2015.
“What the Earth Remembers,” Contested Global Landscapes Project Conference, Institute for the Social Sciences, Cornell University, April 9, 2015.
“Romancing the Trace: Edward Hitchcock's Speculative Ichnology,” Department of English, Johns Hopkins University, March 26, 2015.
“Thinking in the Anthropocene,” roundtable, Lannan Symposium: In Nature's Wake: The Art and Politics of the Environmental Crisis, Georgetown University, March 25, 2015.
“Romancing the Trace: Edward Hitchcock's Speculative Ichnology,” Society for the Humanities/Atkinson Center Annual Lecture on Sustainable Futures, Cornell University, March 2, 2015.
“Time and Again: The Circuits of Spirit Photography,” Circuit, Current, Connection Symposium, Penn State, Center for American Literary Studies, February 27, 2015.
“Romancing the Trace: Edward Hitchcock's Speculative Ichnology,” SUNY Albany, Department of English, February 25, 2015.
“Geo-Testimonial in the Anthropocene,” New Matters and Queer Life Symposium, Yale University, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, January 30, 2015.
“How the Earth Feels: Geo-Affect in Times of Crisis,” Cornell University, Society for the Humanities, October 31, 2014.
“Romancing the Trace: Ichnology, Aesthetics and Agency, 1835-1860,” University of Toronto Affect Seminar, October 24, 2014.
“On Moving Ground: The Unsettled States of American Studies,” Northwestern University, October 17, 2014.
“Romancing the Trace: Ichnology, Aesthetics and Agency, 1835-1860,” Rutgers University Americanist Seminar, May 1, 2014.
“Romancing the Trace: Ichnology and Affect, 1835-1860,” Columbia University American Studies Seminar, February 4, 2014.
“How the Earth Feels: Geological Fantasy and the Queer Nonhuman,” University of Southern California, October 17, 2013.
“Time and Again: The Circuits of Spirit Photography,” University of California-Irvine, May 30, 2013.
“Sacred Theories of Earth, or, What It’s Like to Channel a Thing,” University of Wisconsin-Madison, April 11, 2013; Columbia University, March 29, 2013.
“Sacramental Geology,” University of California-Berkeley, April 3, 2013.
“Earthiness, Enchantment, Exuberance,” Johns Hopkins University, November 2, 2012.
“The Erotics of Objects: Reading, Sex, ‘A New England Nun,’ English Department Americanist Colloquium, University of California-Los Angeles, October 11, 2012.
“The Way We Read Sex Now,” Pomona College, March 2, 2012.
“Touching Spirits,” keynote address, George Washington University Graduate English Colloquium, February 10, 2012.
“Feminism without Humans,” Futures Seminar, Program for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality , Johns Hopkins University, December 8, 2011.
“Spirits That Matter, or, the Return of the Ghost,” Pomona College, October 13, 2011.
“Spirits That Matter: Spiritualism, Photography and the History of Worlds,” Americanist Colloquium, Yale University, September 29, 2011.
“The Ghostly Turn,” keynote address, “Critical Junctures: America and its Crises,” Chesapeake Area American Studies Association conference, George Mason University, April 2, 2011.
“The Politics of (Queer) Grief,” Hamilton College, November 8, 2010.
“Touching, Clinging, Haunting, Worlding: On the Spirit Photograph,” keynote address, “Death and Representation,” University of Rochester, March 26, 2010; invited talk, Haverford College, March 27, 2010; Bowdoin College, April 30, 2010; Cornell University, October 1, 2010; Wellesley College, November 2, 2010.
Conference Presentations
“Melancholia,” for “Our Secular Concepts,” American Comparative Literature Association Convention, Los Angeles, California, March 31, 2018.
“Indian Underground: Geological Fantasy and Settler Colonialism,” for “The Subterranean Nineteenth Century,” Climate, C19: The Society for 19th Century Americanists Biennial Conference, Albuquerque, NM, March 24, 2018.
Chair, “Other Humans,” C19: The Society for 19th Century Americanists Biennial Conference, Albuquerque, NM, March 24, 2018.
“The Memory of Water,” for “Political Disappointment,” Modern Language Association Convention, New York, NY, January 5, 2018.
“I Wish I Knew How to Quit You,” for “Anthropocene Reading,” roundtable, Modern Language Association Convention, New York, NY, January 4, 2018.
“Earthquakes for Boys,” for “Ecological Catastrophe, Past and Present,” roundtable, Modern Language Association Convention, Philadelphia, PA, January 6, 2017.
“Extinction,” for “Unsettling? The Field of C19 Studies: A Roundtable,” Unsettling, C19: The Society for 19th Century Americanists Biennial Conference, Penn State University, March 19, 2016.
Chair, “Queer History and the Ontological Turn,” Modern Language Association Convention, Austin, TX, January 9, 2016.
Chair, “Afterlives of Nineteenth-Century American Racism,” Modern Language Association Convention, Austin, TX, January 9, 2016.
“Love and Death in the Anthropocene,” for “Forms and Fantasies of Annihilation,” American Studies Association Convention, Toronto, ON, October 8, 2015.
“Rocks,” for “Speaking Substances: Media for the Anthropocene,” Modern Language Association Convention, January 8, 2015.
“Fossils,” for “Enchanted Objects,” roundtable, Commons, C19: The Society of Nineteenth Century Americanists Biennial conference, Chapel Hill, NC, March 14, 2014.
Chair, “Here and Now: The Critical Possibilities of the Textured Present,” American Studies Association Convention, Washington, DC, November 23, 2013.
“Stuff White People Like,” for New Materialisms, Futurity, Speculative Realisms plenary session, American Studies Association Convention, San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 16, 2012.
“Sacred Theories of Earth, or, Getting Your Rocks Off,” for “Nonsecular Embodiments in Antebellum America,” Prospects: A New Century, C19: The Society of Nineteenth Century Americanists Biennial Conference, Berkeley, CA, April 13, 2012.
“Turning to Stone,” for Affective Histories, Critical Transformations session, American Studies Association Convention, Baltimore, MD, October 21, 2011.
“Touching the Spirit Photograph,” for “The Spectral and the Spectacular,” Imagining: A New Century, C19: The Society of Nineteenth Century Americanists Inaugural Conference, Penn State University, May 23, 2010.
“Sex and Time,” for “Time after History,” Modern Language Association Convention, Philadelphia, PA, December 29, 2009.
Professional Service
Member, Editorial Collective, Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, 2018-present.
Editorial Advisory Board, Salvaging the Anthropocene (book series), West Virginia University Press, 2018-present.
Editorial Board, American Literature, 2016-2018.
Selection Committee, Modern Language Association Prize for a First Book, 2014-2016.
Executive Committee, MLA Division on Nineteenth-Century American Literature, 2013-2018.
Humanities Review editor, GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies, 2011-18.
C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists: Program Committee, 2010-2012; Advisory Board, 2008-present.
Alan Bray Book Award Committee member, GL/Q Caucus of the Modern Language Association, 2009 and 2012.
External Reviewer, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, Fairfield University, spring 2012.
Chesapeake Area American Studies Association, Board Member, 2011-2013.
Chair, Michael Lynch Service Award Committee, GL/Q Caucus of the Modern Language Association, 2007-2008.
DC Queer Studies Consortium, founder and coordinator, 2007-2010.
