Department of English

My research takes a transatlantic approach to pre-1900 literature of the Americas, in conjunction with ecocriticism, aesthetics, and rhetoric. Contextualizing nineteenth century naturalism within a longer racialized history of industrialized labor, my dissertation draws a connection between seventeenth and eighteenth century representations of the Caribbean sugar plantation and late nineteenth century naturalist representations of the factory. I am focused, in particular, on the ways in which metaphor functions to conceal or foreground violence. I am currently a fellow at the John Carter Brown Library.