ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS
Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of California, Los Angeles, 2023-present.
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Indiana University, Bloomington, 2021-2023.
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; trans studies
PUBLICATIONS
Monograph
The Salvaging Disposition: Waste and the Novel Form (in progress).
Essays
“Some Pleasures of Disappointment” (in progress).
“Literary Form and the London Foundling Hospital” (in progress).
“Rot in Jail: Penal Infrastructure Before 1800.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 58.1 (2024): 81-99.
Book Reviews
Review of Organic Supplements: Bodies and Things of the Natural World, 1580-1790, ed. Miriam Jacobson and Julie Park. Eighteenth-Century Fiction 35.1 (2023).
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
“Unsevering the Plot: Literary Form and the London Foundling Hospital.” Eighteenth-Century Scholarly Seminar, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. December 5, 2025.
“Climates of Supremacy.” Climate and Crisis Conference, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL. April 19-20, 2024.
“Salvage Economics.” Winter Athenaeum, Department of English, University of California, Los Angeles. March 4, 2024.
“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.
“On Waste and the Book: Origins of the Attention Economy.” Wastework: An International Conference. Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome, Italy. March 15-17, 2023.
“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
“The Trans-Historicist Eighteenth Century.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Los Angeles, CA. January 7-10, 2027 (scheduled).
“Aphra Behn and the Pleasures of Disappointment.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA. April 9-11, 2026.
“‘In All Kinds of Weather’: Climates of Supremacy.” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Biennial Conference, College Park, MD. July 8-11, 2025.
“Landscapes for Living: On Ann Radcliffe’s Eco-Formalism.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting, online. April 4-5, 2025.
“Daniel Defoe, Christina Sharpe, and the Ethics of History-Making.” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, Montreal, QC. March 14-17, 2024.
“Mutiny and Form in The Woman of Colour.” Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting, Montreal, QC. October 18-21, 2023.
“Always Already Obsolete: The Prison Around 1800.” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism Annual Conference, Huntsville, TX. March 30 – August 1, 2023.
“Financial Capitalism and the Novel Form.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting, St. Louis, MI. March 9-11, 2023.
“Daniel Defoe, Christina Sharpe, and the Problem of Contemporaneity.” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting, St. Louis, MI. March 9-11, 2023.
“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
Organizer of the roundtable, “Just in Time: (Im)moral Subjecthood and Literary Studies.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention. New Orleans, LA. January 9-12, 2025.
Lead Organizer, One Million Experiments Film Screening and Discussion. Junior Faculty Series. University of California, Los Angeles. March 7, 2024.
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 Course Taught at University of California, Los Angeles
ENGL 250: “Abolition(ism) Before 1800”
Undergraduate Courses Taught at University of California, Los Angeles
ENGL M101A: “Queering the Eighteenth Century”
ENGL 118A: “Castaways and Containers: Modernity at Sea”
ENGL 122: “Abolition: Histories and Theories”
ENGL 133: “Lives of Property in the Colonial Atlantic World”
ENGL 139: “The Age of Phillis”
ENGL 169: “Crime, Culture, and (In)Justice”
ENGL 180: “Second Thoughts: Tristram Shandy”
ENGL 182C: “The Greatest Novel in the English Language? Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa”
Graduate Course Taught at Indiana University, Bloomington
ENG-L626: “Possessions and Dispossession”
Undergraduate Courses Taught at Indiana University, Bloomington
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
“Literature Humanities,” Columbia University. Spring 2020.
“Wasteland: Literature, Environment, Aesthetics,” Rice University. Fall 2018.
“Authorship, Authority, and the Eighteenth-Century Novel,” University of Chicago. Fall 2016.
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
Co-Convener, Early Modern Studies Institute Long Eighteenth Century Seminar, The Huntington Library. November 2025 – present.
Committee Member, Undergraduate Committee, Department of English, University of California, Los Angeles. September 2025 – present.
Committee Member, Access and Belonging Committee, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. July 2025 – present.
Committee Member, Faculty Advisory Committee for the Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies and William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles. September 2024 – present.
Committee Member, Center for the Study of Women | Streisand Center Faculty Advisory Committee, University of California, Los Angeles. July 2024 – present.
Committee Member, Executive Committee, Department of English, University of California, Los Angeles. September 2024 – June 2025.
Committee Member, Workshop Planning Committee, Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington. September 2022 – May 2023.
Faculty Advisor, Working Title (Undergraduate Arts Journal and Club), Indiana University, Bloomington. August 2022 – May 2023.
Committee Member, Advisory Committee, Department of English, Indiana University, Bloomington. August 2022 – May 2023.
Committee Member, General Education, Arts and Humanities Subcommittee, Indiana University, Bloomington. January 2022 – May 2023.
Committee Member, Job Placement Committee, Department of English, Indiana University, Bloomington. August 2021 – May 2023.
Committee Member, Outreach Committee, Department of English, Indiana University, Bloomington. August 2021 – May 2022.
FELLOWSHIPS & HONORS
Faculty Research Grant, Center for the Study of Women | Streisand Center, 2025-26.
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
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)