Invited Talks
“The Art and Literature of Climate Change.” Jilin University (吉林大学), China. April 2019.
“British Industrialization and Ecological Utopias.” Jilin University (吉林大学), China. April 2019.
“Carboniferous Time,” Anthropocene History Workshop, Neubauer Collegium, March 2019
“In Human Scale: The Early Aesthetics of Climate Change.” Princeton Victorian Colloquium, Princeton University, November 2018.
“Coal in the Victorian Imagination: Deep Time and the End of Empire.” Data Scarcity and the Human Past workshop, Stanford University, March 2017.
“Temporalities of Coal in the Nineteenth Century.” Environmental Humanities Project, Stanford University, January 2017.
“Carboniferous Time: Victorian Coal at the Anthropocene Transition.” Nineteenth-Century Studies Colloquium, Yale University, November 2017.
“Classicism and Kink,” Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, May 2017.
“In Human Scale” Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University, April 2017.
“V21: Presentism and Victorian Studies.” English Department, Indiana University, March 2017.
“Fin du Globe: On Decadent Planets.” Environments and Societies Colloquium, University of California, Davis, February 2017.
“Fin du Globe: On Decadent Planets.” Victorian Literature and Culture Seminar, Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University. November 2016.
“V21 and Strategic Presentism” (Keynote). Graduate Student Conference, Loyola University Chicago, October 2016.
“In Human Scale: Thinking Climate Change with Thomas Hardy.” Nineteenth-Century Faculty Seminar, Oxford University, June 2016.
“Aesthetic Play in Alexander Bain and Herbert Spencer.” Victorian Psychology Now, Birkbeck College, University of London, June 2016.
“Scale.” Midwest Faculty Seminar, University of Chicago, April 2016.
“Keywords for Strategic Presentism: Scale, Resonance, Presence.” Plenary roundtable, Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Conference, Asheville, NC, March 2016.
“Scales without Size in Tess of the d’Urbervilles.” History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science Workshop, University of Chicago, February 2016.
“Feeling Anthropocene: Arctic Aesthetics in the Nineteenth Century.” University of Maryland College Park, Department of English, February 2014.
“Victorian Neuroaesthetics.” History of Human Sciences Workshop, University of Chicago, November 2013.
“How Matter Learned to Think: Wilkie Collins, Walter Pater, and Physiological Aesthetics.” Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies, Birkbeck College, University of London, October 2013.
“Aesthetic Experience and the Embodied Mind in Victorian Science and Literature.” University of Edinburgh, Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, September 2013.
“Renegade Aesthetics.” Inter-Chicago Circle for Experimental Critical Theory. Newberry Library, Chicago, August 2013.
“Critical Empathy: Reading the Movement of Form in Vernon Lee’s Aesthetics.” Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Cultures Workshop, University of Chicago, May 2011.
“On Physiology and Beauty.” Franke Institute for the Humanities luncheon series, University of Chicago, February 2011.
“Grant Allen and the Science of Aesthetic Pleasure.” Arts Research Center Symposium, UC Berkeley, May 2009.
Public-facing
“The Art and Literature of Climate Change.” University of Chicago Humanities Day. October 2018.
“The Fate of the Oceans.” Looking Glass Theater production of 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas post-performance panel, Chicago, July 2018.
“Global Thought in the Anthropocene.” Panel discussion with Ursula Heise, Bill Brown, and Fredrik Jonsson. Center for International Studies, 50th Anniversary Series, University of Chicago, May 2016.
“Climate Change Studies and Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration.” Transatlantic Forum: Big Challenges, Human Solutions. Norwegian Embassy/University of Chicago, October 2016.
“Memory: Writing, Traces, and the Unconscious.” Object Roundtable, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, October 2015.
“From Clouds to Gas: Atmospheres of Industrialization.” Object Roundtable, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, March 2015.
“Darkness and Invisibility.” Smart Museum of Art Object-Based Workshop. University of Chicago, April 2013.
Conference Papers and Presentations
“Horizons of Expectation,” “The Return of the Nineteenth Century?” workshop co-hosted by the 18th and 19th Century Atlantic Cultures Workshop and the 20th and 21st Century Workshop, University of Chicago, April 2019.
“From Science and Literature to Environmental Humanities.” Modern Language Association. Chicago, IL. 2019
“Victorian Ecological Crises.” Modern Language Association. Chicago, IL. 2019.
“Cyclical Emergency: The Political Ecology of the 1876-1878 Madras Famine.” American Studies Association. Atlanta, GA. November 2018.
“Scaling as Critical Practice: On Size and its Values.” North American Victorian Studies Association Conference. St. Petersburg, FL. October 2018.
“Ecological Scaling in Madras Famine Journalism, 1876-1881,” VCologies, University of Nevada, Reno, September 2018.
“Carboniferous Time.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Association, San Francisco, March 2018.
“Scalar Rupture: Coal at the Holocene/Anthropocene Boundary.” Vcologies, University of Texas, Houston, September 2017.
“Decadent World Ecologies.” North American Victorian Studies Association, Phoenix, AZ, November 2016.
“Utopian World Ecology in Samuel Butler’s A First Year at Canterbury Settlement and Erewhon.” Vcologies Symposium, University of California, Davis, September 2016.
“Fin du Globe: On Decadent Planets.” 20th and 21st Century Workshop, University of Chicago, May 2016.
“Presentism, Form, and the Future of History.” V21 Symposium: Presentism, Form, and the Future of History. Chicago, IL, October 2015.
“Cold Paradise: The Arctic’s Utopian Pull.” International Conference on Narrative, Chicago, IL, March 2015.
“After the Arctic Sublime: Aesthetic Categories in the Anthropocene.” American Comparative Literature Association, Seattle, WA, March 2015.
“The Arctic in the Anthropocene: Voyage Narratives, Deep Time, and Planetary Context.” North American Victorian Studies Association, London, Ontario, November 2014.
“Transnational Wilde.” Modern Language Association, Chicago, IL, January 2014.
“Living Matter in Victorian Physiology and Aesthetics, 1840–1860.” Modern Language Association, Chicago, IL, January 2014.
“Mapping the Sublime: Scientific Knowledge and Aesthetic Judgment in the Arctic and the Alps.” North American Victorian Studies Association, Pasadena, CA, October 2013.
“Bodies as Networks in Victorian Aesthetics.” North American Victorian Studies Association, Madison, WI, September 2012.
“Some Objects of Victorian Aesthetic Theory.” Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, Milwaukee, WI, September 2012.
“How Things Look: Clementina Anstruther-Thomson and the Aesthetics of Material Vision.” North American Victorian Studies Association Conference, Montréal, November 2010.
“Aesthetics/Hedonics: The Science of Pleasure at the fin de siècle.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies Conference, Skidmore College, April 2009.
“A Lot of Art is Boring: The Psychological Aesthetics of Grant Allen and Vernon Lee.” Northeast Victorian Studies Association Conference, Wellesley College, April 2009.
“Regeneration: Evolutionary Aesthetics and the Biology of Form.” Nineteenth Century Studies Association Conference, March 2009.
“Lucretian Aestheticism: The Materialist Flux and Aesthetic Subjectivity.” North American Victorian Studies Association Conference, Yale University, November 14–16, 2008. Also given at the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Conference, Pomona College, November 2008.
“The Pleasures of Sinking: Decadent Self-Loss as Sublime Immersion.” Northeast Victorian Studies Association Conference, University of Toronto, April 2008.
“Is Bad Aestheticism Good Politics? William Morris and the Debate over Individualism.” Rhetoric Department Faculty/Graduate Student Panel, UC Berkeley, December 2007.
“Pater’s Ethical Materialism.” North American Victorian Studies Association Conference, University of Victoria, October 2007.
“The Aesthetics of ‘Pure Means’: Violence and the Law in Benjamin and Agamben.” Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities Conference, Syracuse University, March 2006.
“Spectatorship as Action: Arendt’s Lectures on Kant and the Futurist Spectacle.” “Rethinking Reception,” Graduate student conference, Duke University, March 2005.
Talks related to teaching and service
“What is Research?: Context” English Department Research Proseminar, April 2019
“Teaching in the Core,” Forum on Teaching in the Core, September 2016
“Using Special Collections and the Smart Museum in Teaching,” April 2016
“Introduction to Media Aesthetics,” Chicago Academic Achievement Program, August 2014 and August 2015
“Negotiating Early Careers,” English Department Professionalization Day, May 2013
“Pop hits and Parodies,” “Guilty Pleasures” talk for English majors, October 2012
Disciplinary discussion group leader, Workshop on Teaching in the College, July 2012
“Successful PhD Applications,” Masters of Arts Program in the Humanities, May 2012