Degrees

• PhD in English, Vanderbilt University (2010)
• Dissertation: The Domestication of U.S. Environmentalism, 1945-1962 (Under the direction of Michael Kreyling, Vera Kutzinski, Teresa Goddu, and Cecelia Tichi)
• MA in English, Vanderbilt University (2006)
• BA with High Honors in English/Creative Writing, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2005)

Research Area

• 20th and 21st century American literature, gender and environmental movements, science fiction (literature and film), sustainability, material culture, georgics and neo-georgics, Southern literature, animal studies

Current Research

• Dream House, Suburban Nightmare: The Discourse of Ecology in the Postwar Suburb. Toward a Literary Ecology of Place: Studies in American Literature. Ed. Karen Waldron and Robert Friedman. (Under Review)
• Carsonalia: Popular Science and the Reception of Silent Spring.

Current Courses

• Going Green: Studies in American Environmentalism (Fall 2010)
• Myth, Music, and Modernity in America (Fall 2010)
• Composition for College Writers (Spring 2009)
• Garden States: Literary Gardens and Human Relationships to the Natural World (Literature: Critical Reading and Critical Analysis, Spring 2008)
• Once Upon a Time: Fairytale, Myth, and the Powers of Narrative (Literature: Forms and Techniques, Fall 2007)
• Into the West: Literature and Landscapes of the American West (Literature: Forms and Techniques, Fall 2006-Spring 2007)

Previous Positions

• Chair, Food Politics Working Group, Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities
• Research Assistant, American Studies Program
• The Morgan Award for First Year Writing Judge. April 2010
• Graduate Assistant Organizer, Modernist Studies Association Tenth Annual Conference (Fall 2008)
• English Graduate Student Association Teaching LiaisonEnglish Graduate Student Association Vice President (Fall 2007-Spring 2008)
• Organizer, Prof. Jonathan Lamb's Mellon Seminar: "The Souls of Brute and Stupid Things" (May 2007)
• Co-organizer, Prof. Paul Young's Mini-Seminar, "Teaching Film to Undergraduates" (Spring 2007)
• English Graduate Student Association Social Co-Chair (Fall 2006-Spring 2007)
• Coordinator, VU English Department First Year Students' Conference (March 2006)
• Graduate Instructor (Fall 2006-Spring 2009)

Professional Societies

• Modern Language Association
• Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment

Professional Honors

• Thomas D. Young Award for Graduate Teaching, Spring 2010
• Department of English Dissertation Year Fellowship, Fall 2009-Spring 2010
• College of Arts and Science Summer Research Award, Summer 2009
• Rose Alley Press Achievement Award, Spring 2008
• Phi Beta Kappa, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2005
• Louis D. Rubin Prize for Fiction, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2005

Selected Publications

• Rethinking the Nuclear Family: Judith Merril's Shadow on the Hearth and Domestic Science Fiction. Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. (Forthcoming Spring 2011)
• The Witness and the Wonder: Flannery O'Connor and Rachel Carson as Cultural Critics. Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee Review. 60:1-2 (June 2010). Pp. 23-34.

Biography

Con los pobres de la tierra
Quiero yo mi suerte echar
El arroyo de la sierra
Me complace mas que el mar

Jose Marti

Miscellaneous

M. A. Thesis: "Tracking Down a Negro Legend": Authenticity and the Postmodern Tourist in Colson Whitehead's John Henry Days