I research techno-cultural history, intersections of ecology and literature, film, and other media, and speculative fiction. Most recently, I co-edited an issue of the journal Paradoxa with the theme “Global Weirding” that features some excellent scholarly essays and riveting interviews that paired China Miéville with Mark Bould and Jeff VanderMeer with Timothy Morton. Currently I’m working on a book that explores the roles of infrastructure in speculative fiction with a particular focus on how economic and ecological ideologies are made concrete and therefore visible in things like bridges, border walls, telecom networks, oil rigs, and roads.

I love to involve Luther students in my research when possible. This summer, Katie Patyk, an English and History double major, and I completed a student-faculty collaborative research project that involved combing a special collection archive of letters that Theodore Sturgeon exchanged with other writers like Ray Bradbury, Octavia Butler, and John Campbell.

In recent years, students have been my research assistants on projects concerning representations of science stations in fiction and in the non-fiction world, on science fiction writers’ responses to the launch of Sputnik, and on the allegorical function of pie and coffee in Twin Peaks.

I’m always on the lookout for students who are intellectually curious and diligent to join me in doing research.