Cass Turner

Department of English
Indiana University, Bloomington

ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS 

Assistant Professor, Department of English, Indiana University, Bloomington, 2021-present.

Postdoctoral Fellow, Society of Fellows in the Humanities, Columbia University, 2019-2021.

Lecturer, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, 2019-2021.

Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Humanities Research Center, Rice University, 2018-19.

EDUCATION

Ph.D., English Language and Literature, University of Chicago, 2018.

College Teaching Certificate, Chicago Center for Teaching, University of Chicago, 2018.

B.A. with highest distinction, English (Modern Studies), University of Virginia, 2010.

RESEARCH AND TEACHING FIELDS

Eighteenth-century Anglophone literatures and cultures; environmental humanities; history of capitalism; global/empire studies; history of the novel; feminist and queer theory

PUBLICATIONS

Monograph 

The Salvaging Disposition: Waste and the Novel Form (in progress). 

Peer-Reviewed Essays

“Disposable World(s): Race and Commerce in Daniel Defoe’s Captain Singleton.” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation (forthcoming). 

“Nature and Classification in Dorothy and William Wordsworth’s Writing.” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 58.4 (2018).

Book Reviews

Review of Eighteenth-Century Environmental Humanities, ed. Jeremy Chow. Eighteenth-Century Studies, (in progress).

Review of Organic Supplements: Bodies and Things of the Natural World, 1580-1790, ed. Miriam Jacobson and Julie Park. Eighteenth-Century Fiction (forthcoming).

Review of The Usufructuary Ethos: Power, Politics, and Environment in the Long Eighteenth Century by Erin Drew. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 29.2 (2022).

Review of Systems Failure: The Uses of Disorder in English Literature by Andrew Franta. Modern Philology 117.4 (2020).

LECTURES, PRESENTATIONS, & WORKSHOPS  

Invited Lectures, Presentations, & Workshops

“The Waste Book: A Case Study.” The Bloomington Symposium: The Book in Hand. Institute for Advanced Study, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. April 13-15, 2023 (scheduled).

“On Waste and the Book: Origins of the Attention Economy.” Wastework: An International Conference. Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome, Italy. March 15-17, 2023 (scheduled).

“Jane Austen’s Worlds; or, the Novel vs. the World.” Society of Fellows in the Humanities, Columbia University, New York, NY. October 29, 2020.

“Byproducts and the Novel from Defoe to Richardson.” Seminar on Eighteenth-Century European Culture, Columbia University, New York, NY. February 20, 2020.

“Byproducts and the Novel from Defoe to Richardson.” Society of Fellows in the Humanities, Columbia University, New York, NY. November 14, 2019.

“Salvage.” Keywords Roundtable at the Waste Matters Symposium, Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. April 11, 2019.

“Salvage Economics.” Waste: Histories and Futures Symposium, Rice University Humanities Research Center, Houston, TX. February 1, 2019.

“Byproducts and the Novel: Recollection in Samuel Richardson’s Pamela.” University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Honolulu, HI. January 10, 2019.

“Cycle.” Response to Tobias Menely. Scaling Forms: Dialogues Across Disciplines Conference, Chicago, IL. April 1, 2016.

Conference Presentations

“Financial Capitalism and the Novel Form.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting, St. Louis, MI. March 9-11, 2023 (scheduled).

“Daniel Defoe, Christina Sharpe, and the Problem of Contemporaneity.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting, St. Louis, MI. March 9-11, 2023 (scheduled).  

“Gentle Whispering: Romanticism and the Arts of Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR).” Joint Meeting of the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism and the British Association for Romantic Studies, online. August 2-5, 2022.

“Is the Novel an Assemblage? Or, Two Janes (Austen v. Bennett).” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting, online. April 7-11, 2021.  

“Elements without Form: On the Critique of Political Romanticism.” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism Annual Conference, Chicago, IL. August 8-12, 2019.

“Hope, Exceptionalism, and the Novel.” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Biennial Conference, Davis, CA. June 26-30, 2019.

“The Character of Infrastructure.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting, Denver, CO. March 21-23, 2019.

“At the Risk of Feeling: Sympathy and the Actuarial Novel.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL. March 22-25, 2018.

“General Population: John Howard’s Prison Reform.” British Association for Romantic Studies International Conference, York, UK. July 27-30, 2017.

“Becoming Waste; or, Ann Radcliffe’s Salvaging Disposition.” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism Annual Conference, Berkeley, CA. August 11-14, 2016.

“Nature’s Metaphors and the Prose World.” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism Annual Conference, Washington, DC. July 10-13, 2014.

CONFERENCE PANEL & EVENT ORGANIZATION  

Co-organizer of the panel, “Worlds and Worldmaking in the Eighteenth Century.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD. March 31-April 2, 2022.

Co-organizer of the panel, “Repairing the Eighteenth Century.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting, online. April 7-11, 2021.

Co-organizer, Symposium on the Ecopolitics of Concrete. Humanities Research Center, Rice University, Houston, TX. March 2, 2019.

Co-organizer, Environmental Film Series. Rice University, Houston, TX. October 2018.

Co-organizer of the panel, “Populations out of Place.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Minneapolis, MN. March 30 – April 2, 2017.

Graduate Student Coordinator, The English Institute Annual Meeting at the University of Chicago. September 16-18, 2016.

Co-coordinator, Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Cultures Workshop, University of Chicago. June 2014 – June 2016. 

Co-coordinator, Dissertation Proposal Writing Workshop, University of Chicago, Fall 2015.

TEACHING  

Graduate Courses Taught at Indiana University, Bloomington

ENG-L627: “Abolition and Reform (Around and Beyond 1800)

ENG-L626: “Possessions and Dispossession”

Undergraduate Courses Taught at Indiana University, Bloomington

ENG-L470: “Lives of Property in the Colonial Atlantic World”

ENG-L369: “Jane Austen: Fictions and Frenemies”

ENG-L260: “Planetary Fictions”

ENG-L312: “Literary History 2: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries”

ENG-L470: “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral”

Courses Taught at Other Institutions

“Lives of Property in the Colonial Atlantic World,” Columbia University. Spring 2021.

“Literature Humanities,” Columbia University. Spring 2020.

“Castaways and Containers: Modernity at Sea,” Columbia University. Fall 2019.

“Wasteland: Literature, Environment, Aesthetics,” Rice University. Fall 2018.

“Authorship, Authority, and the Eighteenth-Century Novel,” University of Chicago. Fall 2016.

Dissertation Committees at Indiana University, Bloomington

Tess Given, PhD Candidate in English, “The Novel Parasite.”

Ph.D. Examination Committees at Indiana University, Bloomington

Emma Swidler, Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Anglophone Literatures.

Tess Given, Eighteenth-Century Literature & Speculative and Science Fiction.

Other Teaching Experience

Preceptor and Mentor, Mellon Mays Undergraduate Summer Research Program, University of Chicago. Summers 2016 and 2017.

Writing Tutor, University of Chicago Writing Program. September 2015 – June 2017.

Course Assistant, “Shakespeare: Tragedies and Romances,” University of Chicago. Spring 2016.

Course Assistant, “Introduction to Fiction,” University of Chicago. Fall 2015.

Course Assistant, “Jane Austen and Criticism,” University of Chicago. Spring 2015.

Pedagogical Training

First-Generation and Low-Income Student Support Training, Rice University. Fall 2018.

Race and Pedagogies Working Group, University of Chicago. Fall 2017.

Seminar and Workshop on Course Design, University of Chicago. Fall 2015.       

Pedagogies of Writing, University of Chicago Writing Program. Summer 2015 

Teaching Undergraduate English, University of Chicago. Winter 2015.

SERVICE  

Committee Member, General Education, Arts and Humanities Subcommittee, Indiana University, Bloomington. Beginning in January 2022.

Committee Member, Workshop Planning Committee, Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington. September 2022-present.

Faculty Advisor, Working Title (Undergraduate Arts Journal and Club), Indiana University, Bloomington. August 2022-present.

Committee Member, Advisory Committee, Department of English, Indiana University, Bloomington. August 2022-present.

Committee Member, Job Placement Committee, Department of English, Indiana University, Bloomington. August 2021-May 2022.

Committee Member, Outreach Committee, Department of English, Indiana University, Bloomington. August 2021-May 2022. 

RESEARCH & RELATED PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

PATHS (Professional Advancement and Training for Humanities Scholars) Project Assistant, UChicagoGRAD, University of Chicago. Spring 2017.

Research Assistant to Professor Elaine Hadley, University of Chicago. January 2015 – September   2017.

FELLOWSHIPS & HONORS 

Stuart Tave Teaching Fellowship, 2018-19. (declined)

Arts, Science & Culture Graduate Collaboration Grant for “Elaborating Waste” Project, 2017-18.

Mellon Foundation – University of Chicago Dissertation Completion Fellowship, 2017-18.

Nicholson Graduate Fellowship for Research in the British Isles, 2017.

Arts, Science & Culture Graduate Fellowship, University of Chicago, 2016-17.

Chawton House Library Visiting Fellowship (Chawton, UK), 2016-17.

University Fellowship, University of Chicago, 2012-2017.

UChicagoGRAD Travel Award, University of Chicago, 2016.

Tillotson Travel Award, University of Chicago, 2014.

Phi Beta Kappa, University of Virginia, 2010.

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

Association for the Study of Literature and Environment

British Association for Romantic Studies

Modern Language Association

North American Society for the Study of Romanticism

REFEREES

Joseph Campana, William Shakespeare Professor of English and Director of the Center for Environmental Studies, Rice University (jac4@rice.edu) 

James Chandler, William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor of English, University of Chicago (docj@uchicago.edu)

Jenny Davidson, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University (jmd204@columbia.edu)

Frances Ferguson, Mabel Greene Myers Distinguished Service Professor of English and the College, University of Chicago (ferguso1@uchicago.edu)

Heather Keenleyside, Associate Professor of English, University of Chicago (heatherk@uchicago.edu)