General Research Statement

While I am primarily a researcher of contemporary literature, much of my research and teaching focuses on connections between narratives and archives of the past, present, and future. How do stories from the past affect our conceptions of the present and the future? Furthermore, given the ways that we can never truly escape the narratives and effects of our past and present, how might we imagine and enact a radically different future?

Current Projects

In the End: Apocalyptic Literature, Minoritarian Identity, and Hopeless Futurity 

My first book project argues that apocalyptic narratives provide innovative ways to read the potential for revelation and change. I examine apocalyptic narratives in speculative literature written or published in the late 20^th and early 21^st century, with a particular focus on minoritarian depictions, to consider the paradoxical ways that apocalyptic literature can imagine and execute a radically new future in the aftermath of a cataclysmic event. I argue for the primacy of minoritarian perspectives for creating change, demonstrating how the heightened awareness that comes from histories of marginalization provides a unique means of imagining and creating a radically altered future. My early chapters explore how some apocalyptic narratives, such as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, evade change by instead embracing a normative futurity that merely replicates the oppressions, inequalities, and destructive human behaviors of the present and past. In later chapters, critical race theory, third-world feminism, queer theory, afrofuturism, and afropessimism inform my claim that explorations of futurity from the perspective of minoritarian identity provide a viable blueprint for achieving a more productively different future. Engaging with the works of Octavia Butler and Colson Whitehead, among others, I demonstrate how reading minoritarian futurity in apocalyptic narratives reveals the limitations of optimistic narratives in favor of productive hopelessness—acknowledging the failure of what we have tried thus far and expanding notions of what we can do differently.

Publications

Refereed Journal Article

“‘She Forgot’: Obscuring White Privilege and Colorblindness in Harper Lee’s Novels” South Atlantic Review. 84.1 (March 2019): 54-71

Book Chapters

“The Limitations of Realist Speculation to Represent and Confront the Anthropocene.” Narrating the Future of the World: Images of the Anthropocene in Speculative Fiction, edited by Tereza Dědinová, Weronika Laszkiewics, and Sylwia Borowska-Szerszun, Lexington Books, Forthcoming 2020.

“Familiar Zombies: Ling Ma’s Severance and COVID-19 protests.” Severance: Right Time, Right Place, edited by Jane Hu and Anjuli Raza Kolb. A Post-45 Collection, October 2020. post45.org/2020/10/familiar-zombies/

Book Review

Review of Beth Lew Williams The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America. Harvard University Press, 2018. In Journal of Asian American Studies vol. 23, no. 1, 2020, pp. 156-158.

Current Digital Projects

Racial Literacies. Web Designer, Copywriter, and Editor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: https://racialliteracies.web.unc.edu

Select Conference Presentations

“Flânerie and Precarity: Urban Walking during the COVID-19 Pandemic and BLM Protests.” SAMLA: Jacksonville, FL/Virtual (November 2020).

“Teaching Difficult Subjects Through Genre Awareness and Analysis.” MLA Annual Convention: Seattle, WA (January 2020).

“The Development of Realist Speculative Narratives to Represent and Confront The Anthropocene” International Conference on Narrative: Pamplona, Spain (June 2019) Panel Chair

“Conflicting Archives and Confederate Memorials” American Studies Association Conference: Atlanta, GA (November 2018)

“Bolstering and Undermining Community in Butler’s Parable series and Whitehead’s Zone One” NEMLA Conference: Pittsburg, PA (April 2018)

“’And Thinking Seemed to make it so’: Human-centric thinking in Ian McEwan’s Solar” King’s College/UNC Contemporary Colloquium Conference: London, UK (August 2017)

“Reopening the Door: Revision and Racial Stereotypes in An Octoroon” SAMLA: Durham, NC (November 2015)

“Plague in Shakespeare’s London and Plays” Blackfriars Conference—American Shakespeare Center: Staunton, VA (October 2015)

“Facing the Unknown: Hope and Melioration in Post Apocalyptic Narratives“ PCA/ACA Annual Conference: New Orleans, LA (March 2015) Panel Chair

“An Unnatural Institution: Exploring Slavery and Ecology in Drums at Dusk” Society for the Study of Southern Literature: Washington, DC (March 2014)