SCHOLARSHIP
& TEACHING
I am a scholar of narrative theory and dystopian fiction, with interests in cultural memory and gender and sexuality. I have taught literary studies, academic writing, and creative writing to undergraduates and have mentored high schoolers in academic research and writing.
THE FUTURE AS WARNING
My dissertation, "The Future as Warning: Narrative Voice and Literary Form in Modern Dystopian Novels," identifies the kinds of narrators and narrative forms that recur across Anglophone dystopian fiction, exploring how these storytelling modes communicate ideological messages and how they shape readers' experiences of dystopian texts. "The Future as Warning" won the Helen Choate Bell Dissertation Prize from the Harvard Department of English for the best dissertation primarily on American literature.
This project was supported by grants and fellowships from the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative, the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Harvard Department of English. It includes archival research performed in the Margaret Atwood Papers at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto, as well as the Anthony Burgess Fonds at the William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections at McMaster University.
A portion of Chapter 1 appeared in Utopian Studies 35.2–3 as the article "City of Glass: Architecture, Narration, and Unruly Bodies in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We."
Abstract: Since modern dystopian fiction appeared in the wake of the First World War and the Russian Revolution, texts in the genre have warned against the dreadful consequences that could result from current sociopolitical trends and have sought to intervene in the present to prevent the manifestation of nightmarish futures. During this time, Anglophone dystopian novels have frequently eschewed the transparent first- and third-person narrators that dominate both realist literary fiction and genre fiction, instead favoring conspicuous and estranging voices. Putting narrative theory in dialogue with dystopian scholarship, “The Future as Warning” investigates this under-researched phenomenon, exploring the relationship between narratorial form, thematic content, and ideological messaging in dystopian fiction. Analyzing texts by American, British, and Canadian writers, as well as one influential Russian, this dissertation examines four narratorial forms that recur across twentieth- and twenty-first-century dystopian novels: the plural first-person we-voice, narration in an invented future version of English, the diary conceit, and the found-document conceit.
OTHER SCHOLARSHIP
An ongoing narrative theory project considers the kinds of plural first-person narrators that appear in Anglophone fiction. My related conference paper "Who Are 'We'? A (Tentative) Typology of We-Narrators" won an honorable mention for the Alan Nadel Prize for the best graduate student paper given at the 2023 Narrative Conference.
I have also presented on the narrative form used in the classic psychoanalytical case study of Anna O., traced the history of a pseudo-relic alleged to be Shakespeare's chair, and studied "flash" newspapers that circulated among Chicago's criminal underworld in 1870s and 1880s.
PRESENTATIONS
I am a dynamic presenter skilled at making complex ideas accessible to both specialist and non-specialist audiences. I have given an invited talk to the Novel Theory Seminar at the Mahindra Humanities Center and have presented at international conferences hosted by such organizations as the Modern Language Association, the Northeast Modern Language Association, the International Society for the Study of Narrative, and the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present.
TEACHING & RESEARCH MENTORSHIP
In recognition of my teaching quality, I received a Certificate of Distinction in Teaching from Harvard University for three semesters. I also completed pedagogical training to earn a Teaching Certificate from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard.
INSTRUCTOR OF RECORD
Imagining Otherwise: Futures and Futurisms in Contemporary American Science Fiction
Department of English, Harvard University | Spring 2023
Dystopian Visions
Department of English, Harvard University | Spring 2022
Accelerated Academic Writing: Sex and Gender
Writing and Rhetoric Program, University of Virginia | Fall 2013, Spring 2014
Poetry Writing
Program in Creative Writing, Department of English, University of Virginia | Fall 2012, Spring 2013
TEACHING ASSISTANT
Literary Methods, with Professor Derek Miller
Department of English, Harvard University | Fall 2021
Postwar American and British Fiction, with Professor James Wood
Department of English, Harvard University | Spring 2021
Imagined Climates: Writing in the Wake of Climate Change, with Professor Sarah Dimick
Department of English, Harvard University | Fall 2020
SENIOR THESIS ADVISOR
Veronica Tang, “Privacy and the Struggle to Preserve It: Reevaluating Big Tech through Contemporary Literature” | Department of English and Department of Computer Science, Harvard University | 2021–2022
RESEARCH MENTOR
High school student researchers | Indigo Research