CV

Research and Teaching Interests

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Environmental humanities, Science Writing, Science and Technology Studies, Gender Studies, Science Fiction

In Progress/ Forthcoming

“Looking Back to Look Forward: Teaching Women’s Historical Science Narratives for Environmental Advocacy” for MLA Options for Teaching, Teaching Science Writing, Spring 2025.

Co-editor of Creatures in the Classroom: Teaching Environmental Creature Features, Lever Press, Spring 2025.

Published/ Completed

“Creature Features and the Environment,” The Roundtable Perspective, ep. 709, Lakeshore PBS, December 22, 2023.

“‘There are Better Ways to Die: Final Girls and Ecohorror’” in Horror Homeroom, September 2023.

“Space Cowboys and Alien Landscapes: Feminist Science Studies and Environmental Narratives in Leigh Brackett’s Science Fiction,” in Unbound, May 2023.

“Introduction” and co-editor, Environmental Creature Feature Special Issue in Science Fiction Film and Television, Fall 2021.

“‘Leaving a Record of Their Coming’: The Creature from the Black Lagoon in the Anthropocene,” in Science Fiction Film and Television, Fall 2021.

“Nature Creeps Back: Creature Features and the Environment with Christy Tidwell and Bridgitte Barclay,” EcoCast, October 2021.

"Hopeful Ecomedia in the Pandemic,” co-written with Environmental Studies students Blythe Keuning, Angie Lopez, and Steven Carter (with artwork and work from three other students, as well), ASLE , October 20, 2021.

“The Extinction-haunted Salton Sea in The Monster that Challenged the World (1957)” in Fear and Nature: Ecohorror Studies in the Anthropocene, July 2021.

“Teaching Ecohorror: Creature from the Black Lagoon” on Association for the Study of Literature and Environment website, June 2021.

“Delia Akeley and Osa Johnson’s Early 20th Century Ecomedia and Colonial Extraction” in Lady Science and Library of Congress, January 2021.

Invited Reflection Piece, “Mortal Critters Join Forces: Living in a Kaiju Film,” Environmental Science Fiction Special Issue of MOSF Journal of Science Fiction, August 2020.

“All of this is terminal”: Devolution in Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God” in Fiction and the Sixth Mass Extinction: Narrative in an Era of Loss, Ed. Jonathan Elmore, Rowman and Littlefield’s Lexington Ecocrticial Theory and Practice Series, May 2020.

“Rebellions Are Built on Hope” in Unbound: A Journal of Digital Scholarship, Winter 2019.

“Darwinian Feminism and Early Science Fiction.” Review of Patrick B. Sharp’s Darwinian Feminism and Early Science Fiction: Angels, Amazons, and Women in Science Fiction Research Association Review, Spring 2019.

Gender and Environment in Science Fiction.  Co-edited with Christy Tidwell and wrote chapter, “Female Beasties: Camp Resistance in 1950s SF Wom-Animal Creature Features.” Rowman and Littlefield’s Lexington Ecocrticial Theory and Practice Series, January 2019.

“Gender in 1950s Invasion Films.” Review of Susan A. George’s Gendering Science Fiction Films: Invaders from the Suburbs in Extrapolation, Fall 2015.

“Making it Graphic” in The Pocket Instructor: Literature. Ed. Diana Fuss and William Gleason. Princeton University Press. 2015

“Through the Plexiglass: A History of Museum Dioramas.” The Atlantic Online. Ed. Ian Bogost and Christopher Schaberg, October 14, 2015.

“ASLE’s Notes from Underground: The Depths of Environmental Arts.” Conference Report. Science Fiction Research Association Review. Summer 2015

“‘Perpetually waving to an unseen crowd’: Humor and Material Feminist Discourses in Beauty Queens” in Female Rebellion in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction. Ed. Sara K. Day, Miranda Green-Barteet, and Amy L. Montz. Ashgate. 2014.

Review of Dianne Newell and Victoria Lamont’s Judith Merril: A Critical Study in Science Fiction Research Association Review, Spring 2013.

“‘It Began This Way’: The Synonymy of Cartography and Writing as Utopian Cognitive Mapping in Herland.” Utopian Studies 17.2 2006: 299-316.

“Louise Meriwether.” Encyclopedia of African-American Women Writers. Vol 2. Ed. Yolanda Williams Page. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007. 402-05.

Presentations

“Deus Ex Machina or Something?: Teaching First-Year College Writing with Experiential Learning in the Age of AI,” Allerton English Articulation Conference, April 2024.

“Writing for Advocacy: Teaching Women’s Historical Science Narratives and Writing in Environmental Studies” on the panel, The Confluence of Historical and Speculative Narratives, College English Association, March 2023.

“‘You didn't think this was the end, did you? It is now’: Women’s Survivor/Revenge Narratives as Ecohorror,” The Society for Cinema and Media Studies, March 2022.

“Hidden Gems on Campus: The Greenhouse,” Aurora University Faculty Teaching and Research Symposium, March 2022.

“‘Webs of speculative fabulation’: Creating Speculative Ecomedia in the Classroom,” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, July 2021.

“Snow Lizards, Space Cowboys, and Missing Twins: Leigh Brackett’s Contributions to The Empire Strikes Back,” Realizing Resistance II, May 2021.

“Women and Popular Science: Reframing Delia Akeley and Osa Johnson’s Early 20th Century Ecomedia,” Invited Panelist for Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, November 2019.

“‘Leaving a record of their coming’: The Creature from the Black Lagoon in the Anthropocene,” Invited Panelist for Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, June 2019.

“‘Rebellions are built on hope’: Women and Star Wars,” Invited Speaker for Digital Frontiers Conference, Realizing Resistance, May 2019.

“The Storied Matter of Science Fiction: Making Kin and Cosmovisions in Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God,” Invited Plenary for Hermanns Lecture Series, University of Texas Arlington, November 2018.

“Extinction-haunted Frontiers in Mid-century SF-horror Films,” Ecomedia in the Anthropocene, Nearly Carbon Neutral ASLE-sponsored Symposium, June 2018.

“Camp Resistance: Animal Avatars and Gender Exaggeration in 1950s Creature Features,” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, Detroit MI, 2017.

“Through the Plexiglass: A History of Museum Dioramas,” Invited Speaker for the Schingoethe Center, March 2017.

Suffragette, Aurora University Arts and Ideas Invited Speaker, November 2016.

“Satire as Resistance in Fourth Wave Material Gender Studies Rhetoric,” Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, Salt Lake City UT, 2016.

“Bitch Planet: Non-Compliance, Science Fiction, Comics, and Bad Feminism,” American Literature Association, San Francisco CA, 2016.

“Gamera, Our Last Hope: Kaiju and Teaching Environmental Discourses,” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, Moscow ID, 2015.

“Desires and Daydreams: Recreating the ‘Animal’ in Museum Habitat Dioramas,” Popular Culture Association/ American Culture Association Conference, Chicago IL, 2014.

“Circus or Science?: Eden, Evolution, and Akeley’s Influence in Two Early SF Films,” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Conference, Lawrence KS, 2013.

“‘Always as a movement forward’: Feminist Science in The Green Kingdom (1957),” WisCon, Madison WI, 2013.

“Formaldehyde Fish and Drivable Ducks: SF Form and Environmental Themes in a Global

Speculative Fiction Course.” Eaton and Science Fiction Research Association Conference, Riverside CA, 2013.

“Disemboweled Suburbs: Teaching Zombie Fiction as Gothic Literature.” American Literature Association Annual Conference, San Francisco, 2012.

“‘Who is it tends the garden?’ Teaching Environmental Ethics with Oryx and Crake and Year of the Flood.” The Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment Bi-annual Conference, Bloomington, 2011.

“A Quiet Fury Rising”: A Feminist Assessment of Ayn Rand.” Invited Speaker, UTA Women’s Studies Department Lecture Series, 2010.

“‘Life is a Tragedy Even Under the Most Favorable Conditions’: Teaching Mizora as an Ambiguous Utopia,” SSAWW Annual Convention, Philadelphia, 2009.

“‘They are still the same ineffectual weaklings, my daughters…’ Satire and Parody as Modes of Subversion in American Women-authored Utopian and Science Fiction,” RMMLA Annual Convention, Reno, 2008.

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“Women’s Spaces: Feminist Desire and the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition,” The Society for Utopian Studies 32nd Annual Conference, Toronto, 2007.

Invited Plenary Panelist, “Emerging Voices in Utopian Studies,” The Society for Utopian Studies Annual Conference, Colorado Springs, 2006.

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Select Courses Taught