I'm a literary scholar who works on literary texts, historical objects, and material culture, mostly in French, but also to an important degree in German. My research explores the boundaries between literature and history, concentrating on eighteenth- through twentieth-century Europe, with a聽particular focus on the intersections of literature and science; much of it engages with the environmental humanities. Though my work also employs methods taken from history of science and intellectual history, the core of my work remains literary; I'm deeply invested in a literary approach to form as well as to material culture.
I served a term at the Princeton Society of Fellows from 2020 to 2023, and I hold a Ph.D. in French and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, an M.A. in Litt茅ratures compar茅es from Paris IV (Paris-Sorbonne), and a B.A. in English Literature and Philosophy from Trinity College, Dublin. 聽
The completed manuscript of my first book is titled聽From Feuilles to Fossils: Documents of Self and World. It concerns the documentary and research practices of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Georg Lichtenberg, Emile Zola, Walter Benjamin, and W.G. Sebald, arguing that they used a variety of materials ranging from diaries, almanacs, research notes, scientific observations, and plant collections as material interfaces that served to record, situate, and indeed constitute their selves among the phenomena of nature and society.
My research on my book has been supported by a Mellon International Humanities Travel Grant, UCRHSS funding from Princeton University, and the ACLS/Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellowship. My articles have been published in聽Eighteenth-Century Studies,聽Romanic Review,聽Dix-Neuf, 补苍诲听Eighteenth-Century French World. I'm currently the French Studies book review editor for the聽Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and have reviewed books for聽French Studies;聽French Society, Politics, and Culture;聽Nineteenth-Century French Studies; and soon for聽Monatshefte.
PUBLICATIONS
鈥淩ousseau鈥檚 Herbaria: Leaves of Self, Books of Nature.鈥澛�Eighteenth-Century Studies聽54.2, Winter 2021, 401-425. (Also forthcoming in French translation in the聽Annales Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 2025.)
鈥淩ousseau on the 脦le de Saint-Pierre: Realism as Circumscription.鈥澛� Sept. 2022,聽Romanic Review聽113.2, 199-221.聽
鈥淕enerating Life from Literature: Proust in Balzac鈥檚 Aquarium.鈥澛�Dix-Neuf, 27.4,
(2023), 286-301.聽
鈥淣arrating Humanity: From Graeber & Wengrow to Rousseau.鈥� Contribution to special issue of聽Le monde fran莽ais du dix-huiti猫me si猫cle/Eighteenth-Century
French World, edited by Rachel Carnell. Vol. 9, N掳 1, summer 2024.聽
鈥淐hemical Manipulations of Nature: New Social Categories in Diderot鈥檚聽贰苍肠测肠濒辞辫茅诲颈别.鈥� In French Enlightenment: Repurposing the Past, eds. Hanna Roman and Olivia Sabee, forthcoming 2025 in the series Oxford Studies in the Enlightenment.
