Office: Keezell 219

Spring 2024 Office Hours:
Tu/Th 11:00am-12:00pm, and by appointment

Specialization: 
Contemporary British and Transnational Anglophone Literature, Postcolonial Literature and Theory, Law and Literature, Cultures of Globalization, Modern/Postmodern Aesthetics

Education: 
Ph.D., English, Brown University, 2011 
M.A., English, Brown University, 2004 
B.A., English Literature and Speech Communications, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, summa cum laude, 2001

Current Research:

Peer-Reviewed Articles
“Regrounding the Secular: Forms of World Sharing in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 67, no. 3 (forthcoming Fall 2021).

“The Bildung of the Professional Class: Development’s Narrative Genres in Mary Karooro Okurut's The Invisible Weevil.” Journal of the African Literature Association, vol. 14, no. 3, 2020, pp. 454-471.

“Professional Intimacies: Human Rights and Specialized Bodies in Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost.” Cultural Critique, vol. 87, 2014, pp. 60-83.

“Professional Subjectivity and the Attenuation of Character in J. M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K.” PMLA, vol. 127, no. 4, 2012, pp. 890-904.

Other Publications
With Peter Leman. “Introduction: Law and Literature from the Global South.” Journal of Commonwelath and Postcolonial Studies, vol. 7, no. 1, 2019, pp. 1-10.

Edited Collections
With Peter Leman. “Law and Literature from the Global South.” Special issue of the Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literature, vol. 7, no. 1, 2019.

Reviews:
“Genre, Genealogy, and Acts of Constitution.” Review of Literature, Law, and Rhetorical Performance in the Anticolonial Atlantic, by Anne W. Gulick. Contemporary Literature, vol. 58, no. 3, 2017, pp. 430-437.

“The War Novel in Africa.” Review of The People’s Right to the Novel: War in the Postcolony, by Eleni Coundouriotis. Novel: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 49, no. 3, 2016, pp. 523-527.

“We Are All Administrators Now: Contemporary Governmentality’s Novel Genealogies.” Review of Geopolitics and the Anglophone Novel, 1890-2011, by John Marx. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, vol.18, no. 3, 2009, published 2015, pp. 404-412.

“Split Decision.” Review of States of Exception in the Contemporary Novel, by Arne De Boever. Novel: A Forum on Fiction vol. 47, no. 2, 2014, pp. 334-337.

Presentations:
“Epidemiology and Literary Experiment in John Edgar Wideman’s The Cattle Killing.” Annual Meeting of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. University of California, Irvine. 7-9 November, 2019.

“Constitutive Genres: Romanticism and Realism as Dueling Nomoi in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.” Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities Annual Meeting. Ottawa, Carleton University, 22-23 March 2019.

“The Bildung of the Professional Class: Development’s Narrative Genres in Mary Karooro Okurut's The Invisible Weevil.” African, African American, and Diaspora Studies Interdisciplinary Conference, Harrisonburg, James Madison University, 21-22 February, 2019

“Ecologies of the Professionalized Postcolonial State: Mary Okurut and Ngugi wa Thiong’o.” Modern Language Association Convention. Chicago, 3-6 January, 2019

“Entrepreneurial Wizardry: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s The Wizard of the Crow and the Neoliberal State.” Postcolonial Studies Association Convention. London, School of Advanced Study, 18–20 September 2017

“Professionalism and Governance in the Neoliberal African State: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow.” Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities Annual Meeting. Palo Alto, Stanford University. 31 March-1 April 2017

“Liberal Institutionalism's Narrative Displacements in Mary Karooro Okurut's The Invisible Weevil.” American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Conference. Boston, Harvard University. 17-20 March 2016

“Alienation as Geomodernist Strategy: The Emplacement of the Writer in J. M. Coetzee’s Australian Fiction.” Boston, Modernist Studies Association Annual Conference. 19-22 November 2015

“Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and the Neoliberal State.” Literature and Crisis: An International Symposium. Miami, Florida International University. 9-10 April 2015

“Tenuous Sovereignty and Narrative Form in Mary Karooro Okurut’s The Invisible Weevil.” The International Conference on Narrative. Chicago, Purdue University Calumet. 5-8 March 2015

“The Politics of ‘Accidental’ Discovery in Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome.” Midwest Conference on British Studies (MWCBS). Chicago, Depaul University. 11-13 October 2013

"Pride of Place: Profession and Emigration in Jamaica Kincaid’s Fiction." American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Conference. Toronto, University of Toronto. 4-7 April 2013

“The Tragedy of Professionalized Sympathy in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go.” Midwest Conference on British Studies (MWCBS). Terre Haute, Indiana State University. 4-6 November 2011

“Infestations of Narrative in J. M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K.” American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Conference. Vancouver, Simon Fraser University. 31 March–3 April 2011

Selected Professional Activities:
Panel Organizer and Chair. “Law and Literature in the Postcolony.” 2014 MLA Convention. Chicago, Illinois. 12 January 2014.
Assessment Committee, University of Alabama, 2013-2014.
Committee on Excellence in Teaching. Curry College, 2011.