CV

Education

  • Ph.D. in English and American Literature, Washington University in Saint Louis, December 2017 (expected)
  • M.A. in English and American Literature, Washington University in Saint Louis, May 2010
  • M.A. in Post-1900 Literatures, Theories, and Cultures, with distinction, The University of Manchester, 2006
  • B.A. in English Literature, Summa Cum Laude, Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University, 2005
  • B.A. in Political Science, with a certificate in International Studies, Summa Cum Laude, Arizona State University, 2005

Dissertation

In my dissertation, The Uses of Character: Modernism and the Politics of Characterization, I argue that modernist experiments with character are attempts to rehabilitate, repair, or revise British and Irish national identity. Chronologically analyzing the works of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Flann O’Brien, and Samuel Beckett, I argue that each author’s oeuvre demonstrates a shift in the construction of character that mirrors a shift in their politics and relationships to specific political and philosophical movements of the early twentieth century such as egoism, feminism, cosmopolitanism, and fascism. My dissertation also challenges received structuralist and poststructuralist accounts of character in the modernist novel. I argue that these accounts are largely continuations or revisions of earlier modernist agendas. As such, these theories of character tend to read literary history teleologically, situating the modernist novel as the predestined endpoint of all literature. This ignores modernism’s varied constructions of character and prevents readings of modernist experimentation with character as historically contingent aesthetic reactions to ideological and political crises. 

Conference Papers

  • “’This Globe Whose Walls are Made of Percival’: Colonialism, Cartography, and Character in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves,” The Louisville Conference for Literature after 1900, Louisville, KY, 2017
  • “Modernism In and Against the Neoliberal University” Modernist Studies Association, Pasadena, CA, 2016
  • “A Shrinking Satin Island: Tom McCarthy, Modernism, and Theory’s Corporate Turn.” The Louisville Conference for Literature after 1900, Louisville, KY, 2016
  • “’His Native Doric’: Relocating the Pastoral and Creating Irish Identity,” American Conference for Irish Studies, Fort Lauderdale, FL, 2015
  • “Abstracting Character; Reinventing Nation,” Modernist Studies Association, Pittsburgh, PA, 2014
  • “‘Creating Only When They Failed to Find a Suitable Existing Puppet’: Recontextualized Characters and the Author in Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds,” International Society for the Study of Narrative, Manchester, UK, 2013

Fellowships

  • Dissertation Fellowship, College of Arts and Sciences, Washington University in Saint Louis, 2014
  • Mellon Foundation Summer Dissertation Seminar Fellowship, “At the Turn of the Century: Modernism and the Question of Periodization,” 2013
  • Mellon Foundation Summer Dissertation Seminar Fellowship, “The Time of Modernism,” 2011

Teaching and Research Interests

Twentieth-Century British and Irish Literature, Modernism, History and Theory of the Novel, Politics of the Novel, Character, Composition

Courses Taught

Washington University in Saint Louis

  • Introduction to Film Studies (teaching assistant), FMS 220, Fall 2011, Fall 2012, Fall 2013
  • Writing 1, L13 E Comp 100, Spring 2013
  • Writing Workshop: Engaging Research, L13 201, Spring 2012
  • Writing 1: Writing Culture, L13 E Comp 100, Spring 2009-Spring 2011

Arizona State University

  • First-Year Composition, ENG 101, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, Fall 2016, Fall 2017
  • First-Year Composition: ENG 102, Spring 2016, Spring 2017
  • Advanced First-Year Composition: ENG 105, Fall 2016, Spring 2017
  • Writing About Literature: ENG 218, Fall 2017

Languages

French: reading

Spanish: reading

Academic Service

  • Co-Coordinator, Dissertation Workshop, 2013-2014
    • Organized bi-weekly workshops for dissertation chapters in progress.
  • Chair, Graduate Colloquium Series Committee, 2013-2014
    • Solicited abstracts from graduate students for events in Fall and Spring to showcase current work, assembled committee of current graduate students to aid in selection, and, in collaboration with those members, selected presenters for each event.
  • Member, Graduate Colloquium Series Committee, 2012-2013
    • Assisted Chair of committee in the selection of presenters for each event and helped to organize and run each event.
  • Chair, Campus-Wide Peer Mentoring Committee, 2011-2012
    • Redesigned, in concert with Associate Dean Nancy Pope, the Washington University Peer Mentoring Handbook and led orientation for department-specific peer mentors, acted as resource for department-specific peer mentors throughout the academic year.
  • Member, Campus-Wide Peer Mentoring Committee, 2010-2011
    • Suggested updates to Peer Mentoring Handbook, acted as resource to new department-specific peer mentors, and helped to run orientation for department-specific peer mentors.
  • Convener, Graduate Advisory Panel, 2010-2011
    • Convened and ran monthly meetings for graduate students to raise issues of any kind with Director of Graduate Studies, Bob Milder. Acted as liaison between Director of Graduate Studies and graduate students to resolve any issues that arose during such meetings.
  • Co-Chair, English Department Peer Mentoring Committee, 2009-2011
    • Primarily assisted first-year graduate students

Professional Organization Memberships

  • Modern Language Association
  • Modernist Studies Association