Education
- Ph.D., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, English (expected May 2020)
- B.A., The University of Texas at Austin, Plan II Honors (Highest Honors) and English Honors (Highest Honors), 2013
Dissertation:“A Glamorous Nightmare: Race, AIDS, and the Biopolitics of American Literary Study” examines, through a range of literary and dramatic texts, how the HIV/AIDS has been configured as a symbolic resource on behalf of white exceptionalism between the 1980s and the present day.
Committee:Matthew Taylor (co-director), Priscilla Wald (co-director; Duke), David Eng (U Penn), Florence Dore, GerShun Avilez (U Maryland).
Selected Awards and Fellowships
- W.M. Keck Fellowship, The Huntington Library, Pasadena CA, 2019
- Marcie Cohen Ferris Research Fellowship, Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, 2019
- Graduate Student Research Award, Program in Sexuality Studies, UNC, 2019
- Conference Travel Grant, American Comparative Literature Association, 2019
- Transportation Grant, The Graduate School, UNC, 2019
- Summer Research Fellowship, Department of English, UNC, 2019
- Transportation Grant, The Graduate School, UNC, 2019
- Summer Research Grant, Provost’s Committee on LGBTQ Life, UNC, 2018
- Summer Research Grant, Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, 2018
- Student Undergraduate Teaching Award (6 awarded across the university), UNC, 2017
- Graduate Student Research Award, Program in Sexuality Studies, UNC, 2017
- Summer Research Grant, Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, 2016
- Ruth Rose Richardson Award for Outstanding Record in the First Year of Graduate Study (highest GPA in cohort), Department of English, UNC, 2015
- Summer Research Grant, Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, 2015
- Mellon Graduate Fellowship, UNC, 2014 – 19
- Dean’s Distinguished Graduate, College of Liberal Arts (12 students chosen from 2,983 graduates), The University of Texas at Austin, 2013
- Phi Beta Kappa, The University of Texas at Austin, 2012
Publications
Journal Articles
- “Immunity’s Racial Empire: Virality, Melancholy, Whiteness,” American Literature (revised and resubmitted)
- “Speaking Fees: Capital, Colony, and Reference in China Mieville’s Embassytown.” LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory31.1 (forthcoming 2020)
- “‘A hint of industrial espionage in the eye’: Orientalism, Essayism, and the Politics of Memory in Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video36.1 (2019): 42 – 61.
- “Long Live the Old Flesh: AIDS and the Americans with Disabilities Act at Quarter Century.” symplokē26.1-2 (December 2018): 251 – 266.
Reviews
- “Deregulating Grief: A Review of Dagmawi Woubshet’s The Calendar of Loss: Race, Sexuality and Mourning in the Early Era of AIDS,” boundary 2, 2016 (Web.)
Other Publications
- “Another LA Lovesong: A Review of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice,” Ethos: A Digital Review of Arts, Humanities, and Public Ethics, 2015. (Web.)
Podcasts
- “Deep Time, Decline, and Nostalgia: A Conversation on Time with Jonathan Sachs and
Noah Herringman (Co-hosted with Ben Murphy.) Interview forETHOS: A Digital Review of Arts, Humanities, and Public Ethics, 2015. (Web.)
Invited Talks
- “‘All the new information in my blood’: Immunity, Melancholy, Virality,” Health and Humanities Lab, UNC, 2019
- “AIDS and the Americans with Disabilities Act at Quarter Century,” Bullitt History of Medicine Lecture Series, School of Medicine, UNC, 2017
- “Foucault Must Be Defended? Race, AIDS, and the Origins of Homonationalism,” LGBT Student Center Speaker Series, UNC, 2017
Conferences
Conferences Organized
- Post-45 Graduate Colloquium, February 2016, UNC
Panels Organized
- “Fighting as we Build? Race, Resistance, and Psychoanalysis” (with David Seitz), American Studies Association Annual Convention, Honolulu, HI
- “Coloring Queer Theory, Queering Critical Race Studies” (with GerShun Avilez), Association for the Study of Arts of the Present (ASAP) Annual Conference, Oakland, CA, 2017
Papers Presented
- “‘All the new information in my blood’: Immunity, Melancholy, Virality,” Modern Language Association Convention, Seattle, WA, 2020
- “Immunity’s Racial Empire: Virality, Melancholy, Whiteness,” American Studies Association Convention, Honolulu, HI, 2019
- “‘All the new information in my blood’: Immunity, Melancholy, Virality,” Post-45 Graduate Symposium, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, 2019
- “Angels and AIDS: A Racial Fantasia on Viral Themes,” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, Washington, DC, 2019
- “‘A necessarily impossible object’: Race, AIDS, and the Origins of Neoliberalism.” Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Johns Hopkins University, 2017
- “Foucault Must Be Defended?” Transnational Imperialisms, King’s College, London, 2017
- “Exceptional Deviance: On the Racial Politics of Homosexuality in Less than Zeroand American Psycho).” Association for the Study of Arts of the Present (ASAP)Annual Conference, Oakland, CA, 2017
- “The New Criticism’s Jewish Question: Finance and Fecundity in Robert Penn Warren’s The Cave.” Post-45 Graduate Symposium, UNC, 2016
- “AIDS in the Great Society: Prosthesis, Containment, and Neoliberal Disability in David Foster Wallace’s ‘Lyndon.’” American Comparative Literature AssociationAnnual Conference, Seattle, WA, 2015
- “Julius Shulman Reconsidered: Jewish Labor, Popular Aesthetics, and the Politics of the Mid-Century Modern Home.” Thinking Beyond The Canon: New Themes and Approaches in Jewish Studies, UCLA, 2015
Teaching
Instructor of Record
- English 147: Mystery Fiction, 35 Students Fall 2019
- English 105: Composition and Rhetoric, 17 Students Spring 2018
- English 105: Composition and Rhetoric, 19 Students Spring 2017
- English 105: Composition and Rhetoric, 19 Students Fall 2016
- English 105: Composition and Rhetoric, 19 Students Spring 2016
- English 105: Composition and Rhetoric, 19 Students Fall 2015
Teaching Assistant
- English 142: Film Analysis, 28 Students Fall 2017
Graduate Research Consultant (including guest lectures)
- English 261: Literary Criticism, 21 Students Fall 2019
- Cmp. Lit. 143: Visual Culture, 16 Students Spring 2018
- English 147: Mystery Fiction, 33 Students Spring 2017
- English 147: Mystery Fiction, 28 Students Spring 2016
Service to University and Field
- Nominee to the MLA Delegate Assembly, Race and Ethnicity, 2020 – 23
- Founding Member and Steering Committee, Post-45 Graduate Collective, 2017 –
- Conference Assistant, Novel Sounds: American Fiction in the Age of Rock and Roll, National Humanities Center, 2016
- Editor (Nonfiction), The Carolina Quarterly, 2014 – 2019
Professional Affiliations
- American Studies Association (ASA), 2019 –
- Association for the Study of Arts of the Present (ASAP), 2017 –
- Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), 2016 –
- Modern Language Association (MLA), 2014 –
- American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), 2014 –
Teaching and Research Interests
- American literature 1945 to present
- African American literature
- Mystery fiction
- Film
- Critical and literary theory
- Queer theory and sexuality studies
- Critical race theory
- Rhetoric and composition
Languages
- French: Reading (fluent), Writing (proficient), Speaking (proficient)
References
- Matthew Taylor (Associate Professor of English, UNC): mattheta@email.unc.edu
- Priscilla Wald (R. Florence Brinkley Professor of English, Duke): pwald@duke.edu
- Florence Dore (Professor of English and Director of Graduate Study, UNC): fdore@unc.edu
- David Eng (Richard L. Fisher Professor of English, U Penn): deng@english.upenn.edu
- GerShun Avilez (Associate Professor of English, University of Maryland): avilez@umd.edu