CV

Curriculum Vitae

Education

  • Harvard University, Ph.D., English, 2003
  • Girton College, University of Cambridge, M.A. 2001, B.A. Honors, English, 1996

Grants & Fellowships

  • Faculty Research Grant, UCLA, 2019-20
  • National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington, D.C. Fellowship, 2012-2013
  • Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, Michael J. Connell Foundation Fellowship, June-August 2009
  • Humanities Consortium, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2004-2005
  • Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, Ahmanson-Getty Fellowship, 2004
  • Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany, Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2003-2004

Honors and Awards

  • Annual Meeting of Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Niagara Falls Keynote Speaker, 2018
  • Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies, UCLA, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library Professor, 2017-2018
  • Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Reinvention of Wonder named CHOICE “Outstanding Academic Title,” 2015

Publications

    (see Publications page)

Employment

  • University of California, Los Angeles, Associate Professor, 2015-
  • University of California, Los Angeles, Assistant Professor, Department of English, 2007-2015 
  • University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, Harper Fellow in the Society of Fellows and Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Humanities Collegiate Division, 2005-2007

Presentations

  • “Moving Subjects.” Annual Meeting of the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies. March 2019.
  • Panelist, “The Post-Critical Eighteenth Century.” Annual Meeting of the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies. March 2018.
  • “Wayward Reading.” Annual Meeting of the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies. March 2017.
  • “Re-writing the Enlightenment.” Modern Language Association Annual Meeting. January 2017.
  • Roundtable participant, “Is Fictionality a Fiction?”Annual Meeting of the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies. March 2016.
  • Roundtable participant, “Uselessness.” Modern Language Association Annual Meeting. January 2016.
  • “When are Fictions Worlds?”Annual Meeting of the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies. March 2015. “Fiction as a World: The History of a Concept.” Worlding the 17th-18th Centuries. Université Paris Diderot. July 2014.
  • “‘Verified by Experience’”: The Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics of Presence.” Annual Meeting of the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies. March 2014.
  • “As if by Magic: Enchanted Transport in Romantic Literature.” Annual Meeting of the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism. August 2013.
  • “Like an Indian: The Pre-History of the Inner Stranger Trope.” Rethinking Enlightenment. The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. December 2012. (Invited lecture.)
  • “Romantic Bubbles, Fictional Worlds.” Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities. University of Cambridge. September 2012. (Invited lecture.)
  • “The View from a Floating Island.” Annual Meeting of the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism. August 2012.
  • “That a Stone Will Fall.” The University of Chicago Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts Annual Weissbourd Conference. May 2012.

Lectures by Invitation

  • Lecture in honor of 300th anniversary of Robinson Crusoe, University of Minnesota. April 2019.
  • Invited speaker, Puzzles, Bots, and Poems: An interdisciplinary symposium on poetics, sculpture, design, and constraint. University of Virginia. October 2018.
  • Invited plenary speaker, The Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (CSECS) / La Société canadienne d’étude du dix-huitième siècle (SCEDHS): Wonder in the Eighteenth Century. October 2018.
  • Invited panelist, A Literary Walpole Weekend at the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. November 2017.
  • Eighteenth-Century Interdisciplinary Salon at Washington University in St. Louis. April 2017
  • “Flimsy Materials: Or, What the Eighteenth Century Can Teach Us About Twenty-First-Century Worlding.” ELH Colloquium, Johns Hopkins University. November 2015.
  • “‘Like an Indian’: the Prehistory of the Inner Stranger.” Department of English, University of California, Berkeley. April 2014.
  • “Like an Indian: The Pre-History of the Inner Stranger Trope.” Rethinking Enlightenment. The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. December 2012.
  • “Romantic Bubbles, Fictional Worlds.” Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities. University of Cambridge. September 2012.
  • “Response to Ian Duncan, ‘Enlightenment Conjectural Anthropology and Romantic Novel Theory.’ Things: Material Cultures of the Long Eighteenth Century, Workshop I. The Huntington Library. April 2012.
  • “Fictions and Lies in Baron Munchausen’s Narrative.” Southern California Eighteenth-Century Group. November 2007.
  • “Fantastic Facts, Fantastic Fictions: Rethinking the Real with Robinson Crusoe and David Hume.” UCLA. February 2007.
  • “‘Digging a Little Deeper’: Mining for Fool’s Gold in the Enlightenment.” Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi su Descartes e Il Seicento. December 2004.

Teaching Experience

  • Recent graduate seminars:
    • English 200. Graduate Proseminar. Fall 2018.
    • English 250. Restoration and 18th-Century Literature: Forms of Attachment. Winter 2018.
    • English 259. Studies in Criticism: Eighteenth-Century Pursuits.
    • Spring 2017. English 259. Studies in Criticism: The Wake of Critique. Spring 2016.
  • Recent undergraduate classes
    • English 10B. Literature in English, 1700-1850. Winter 2020, Winter 2017, Fall 2017
    • English 161C. The Novel in English to 1850. Fall 2019
    • English 122: Keywords in Theory: Attachment and Detachment in Literature and Criticism. Fall 2019
    • General Education 21B: History of Modern Thought. Fall 2018

Service

  • UCLA Department of English:
    • Undergraduate Committee, 2011-12, 2019-20
    • Teaching Award Committee, 2018-19
    • Personnel Committee, 2016-18
    • Graduate Committee, 2015-18
    • Executive Committee, 2009-2010, 2014-15, 2017-18
  • UCLA Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies,
    • Leader, Clark Summer Institute, 2018
    • Fellowship Committee, 2008-2012, 2018
    • Faculty Advisory Committee, 2013-present
      Core Committee for Graduate Certificate in Early Modern and Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2013-present
  • University Service
    • College Faculty Executive Committee, 2017-20
    • College Commencement Speaker Committee, 2018-20

Other Professional Activities

  • MLA Executive Committee for Late 18th-Century British Literature (term: 2020-2025)
  • Co-organizer, “Becoming Attached: Attachment’s Role in Literary History and Theory.” Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association. March 2019.
  • Co-organizer, “Becoming Media”: Core Program at the Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies, UCLA, 2017-2018 Co-organizer, “Rethinking the Rise of Fictionality.” Conference at UCLA William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, February 2017
  • Invited participant, New Literary History seminar in post-critical interpretation. University of Virginia, October 2014
  • Co-organizer, "Philosophical Questions, Literary Practices: Fiction and Form in the Long Eighteenth Century." Conference at UCLA William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, May 2011

Peer Review for Scholarly Presses and Journals

  • Book-length manuscripts: Stanford University Press, Fordham University Press, Oxford University Press, University of Virginia Press.
  • Article-length manuscripts: ELH, Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, PMLA, A History of the Present, Literature Compass, European Romantic Review. 

Public Writing