I am a literary scholar focused on 20th- and 21st-century literature and culture, with expertise in Anglo-American modernism. My scholarship in recent years fits broadly within the New Modernist Studies, which seeks to expand the focus and scope of this important historical moment beyond traditional understandings. I’m also interested in the “speculative turn” in contemporary multiethnic literature.
My work brings literary and intellectual histories together with critical theory, seeking new ways to understand the relationship between aesthetics and politics in the modern world.
I received my PhD from the University of Oregon, have taught courses in literature, critical theory, research writing, and humanities methods, and I had the pleasure of working on the Cambridge History of American Modernism. My academic work can be found in the journals Modernism/modernity, Disability Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, and Studies in the Novel, among others.
My seminars and themed humanities methods courses at the PSU Honors College include “Being and Belonging in the Modern Woolfian Cityscape,” “Normativity, Longing, and Literary Dissent,” and “Theorizing Speculative Literature,” as well as Honors Thesis sections.
I love talking with students about literature, film, and their interests, so please reach out if you would like to find time to chat together.
Selected Publications
“The Curious Case of Carson McCullers: Appropriation, Allyship, and the Problem of Speaking for Others.” Disability Studies Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 3-4, 2023.
“Review of The Short Stories of John Joseph Mathews, an Osage Writer, edited and with an introduction by Susan Kalter,” Western American Literature, vol. 58, no. 2, 2023, pp. 172-174. [Invited book review.]
“Sacred Space, Secular Time: Sundown and the Indigenous Modernism of John Joseph Mathews.” Modernism/modernity, vol. 28, no. 2, April 2021, pp. 229-250.
“Estrangement and the Consequences of Metaphorical Deafness: Reconsidering The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, 2021, pp. 57-73.