My current research focuses on intersections of machines, ideology, and ecology in literature and film. My recently completed dissertation, The Hour of the Machine, explores how and why specific machine figures have shaped thought and discourse on social structures and change, labor, and ecology since the Industrial Revolution. The dissertation works with two machine figures: "cog in the machine" and "wheels within wheels." I argue that the patterns and shifts in their transmission from the early nineteenth century to present reveal major formations of thought and discourse as well as significant contradictions within these formations where change may yet be possible. The project functions through a synthesis of quantitative data-based research and traditional close reading interpretations: think of Franco Moretti and Harold Bloom discussing literary history on a factory floor. This hybrid methodology puts close reading analysis in conversation with a material literary history of these machine figures.

More broadly, my research interests include ecocriticism, ecocinema studies, literary theory and history, science fiction, and contemporary novels. At Luther, these interests greatly informed the designing of the courses I am teaching, and I look forward to synthesizing this teaching with developments in my ongoing research activity.