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Lecturer

• Affiliation(s)

  • Department of English, University of Michigan Lecturer and Research Fellow

• Fields of Study

  • Academic and Nonfiction Writing, American Studies, American Literature, American Art, Oceanic Studies, Maritime Culture, Environmental Studies, Museums, Material Culture, Technology and Obsolescence

• About

  I teach in the Lloyd Hall Scholars Program and in Writing Workshop at Sweetland. I share with my students my interest in and love for literature, art, museum culture, the maritime world, book arts, and Detroit.

  My academic research and writing explores technological obsolescence, economic change, and environmental perception in U.S. literature and visual culture. I am especially interested in thinking about these problems at work in cultural texts about the ocean. I am currently at work on a book manuscript that asks: Where do industries go when they die? My case study is the U.S. whaling industry, the nation's primary energy industry before petroleum took over in the mid-19th century.

  Courses/Teaching Assignments

  • LHSP 125 (Introduction to College Writing): Writing in Place: Detroit
  • LHSP 230 (Writing and Arts II): Books with Pictures
  • Sweetland Writing Workshop
  • English 407: Journalism and American Literature
  • English 398: American Literature and the Sea
  • English 298: Introduction to Literary Studies

• Education

  • Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization, Harvard University

• Grants

  • My research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Carter Brown Library, the Charles Warren Center, and Harvard University.

• Presentations

  • “A Sub-Sub-Librarian for the Digital Archive: Moby-Dick and Print Nostalgia.” Modern Language Association. Boston, MA. January 2013.
  • “The Pioneer Inland Whaling Association.” American Studies Association Annual Meeting. San Juan, Puerto Rico. November 2012.
  • "Historic Exhibitions of Whales and Whaling." Talk at the Mystic Seaport Museum. Mystic, CT. July 2012.
  • “Panoramas of the Future: War, Industry, and American Moving Panoramas, 1840-1865.” American Studies Association Annual Meeting. Baltimore, Maryland. October 2011.