The connection between philosophy and real or everyday language belongs to Wordsworth’s early poetic vision. My interest in Wordsworth’s dialogue with philosophical thinking leads me to turn neither to studies tracing the varied philosophic influences on his poetics nor to those examining the influence of his collaborator Coleridge on his ear…[Read more]

Keats’s poetic thoughts on the topic of human identity remain some of Romanticism’s most incisive reflections on the constitution of selfhood. This essay is about the ways Keats’s verse thinks through questions about human subjectivity and its horizons with an imaginative range. Keats famously asserts that the poetical character has “no i…[Read more]

Keats’s poetic thoughts on the topic of human identity remain some of Romanticism’s most incisive reflections on the constitution of selfhood. This essay is about the ways Keats’s verse thinks through questions about human subjectivity and its horizons with an imaginative range. Keats famously asserts that the poetical character has “no i…[Read more]

A distinctive style of “Scottish Gothic’”emerged, after 1815, in fiction by Walter Scott, James Hogg, and fellow members of the Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine circle. This chapter introduces this corpus of Scottish Gothic literature, specifies some ways in which the uncanny entailments of Scottish Gothic relate to religious discourse (very muc…[Read more]

A distinctive style of “Scottish Gothic’”emerged, after 1815, in fiction by Walter Scott, James Hogg, and fellow members of the Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine circle. This chapter introduces this corpus of Scottish Gothic literature, specifies some ways in which the uncanny entailments of Scottish Gothic relate to religious discourse (very muc…[Read more]

This essay suggests that with the increasing prominence of “historical poetics” as a set of social collectives, methodologies, and debates (especially about literary analysis), now seems to be an ideal time to assess its history and consider its future. The first part of the essay offers a genealogy of historical poetics, accounting for some of…[Read more]

It is well known that Walter Scott adapted the forms of sentimental fiction for his initial trilogy of novels on Scottish manners and that he drew on philosophical theories of sympathy when conceiving of his characters and placing them in historical relation to one another and to his readership. Scott’s adaptations of sentimentalism and of…[Read more]

It is well known that Walter Scott adapted the forms of sentimental fiction for his initial trilogy of novels on Scottish manners and that he drew on philosophical theories of sympathy when conceiving of his characters and placing them in historical relation to one another and to his readership. Scott’s adaptations of sentimentalism and of…[Read more]

Abstracts for the Two-Panel Series “More Is More: Rules and Riddles of Nineteenth-Century Vielschreiberei.” MLA Annual Convention, Washington, D.C., January 6–9, 2022.

This article proposes a new literary history of British Asia that examines its earliest communities and cultural institutions in translocal and regional registers. Combining translocalism and regionalism redefines Anglo‐Indian writing as constituted by multisited forces, only one of which is the reciprocal exchange between Britain and its c…[Read more]

A syllabus for a 300-level (3rd year) English literature course taught at the University of Victoria’s English department

In this short essay I discuss two new translations of Helmuth Plessner’s work, “Political Anthropology,” translated by Nils F. Schott (Northwestern University Press, 2018), and “Levels of Organic Life and the Human: An Introduction to Philosophical Anthropology,” translated by Millay Hyatt (Fordham University Press, 2019).

First presented as a paper at the 2018 SAMLA Convention in Atlanta, this article will become a chapter of my book in progress on the photobooks of the 1930s and 1940s illustrated with the photographs of the Farm Security Administration.

This is the PowerPoint presentation to accompany my comments for the Theoretical Foundations of Victorian Studies roundtable on January 7, 2021.

This essay draws on formalist cultural studies and material feminism to argue for a new approach in modernist studies, which I call formalist materialism, an approach that reads ecological forms alongside aesthetic forms. Such an approach may have distinct advantages. Formalist materialism illuminates a new direction for formalists by connecting…[Read more]

Introduction to a special issue on Renaissance post-humanism and its afterlives.

Direct and indirect women’s access to the expression of their ideas and wishes on ink and paper has significantly contributed to the construction of the Latin American colonial archive. Nevertheless, this contribution to the area of Latin American women’s studies still remains little known and understudied. The colonial tradition of women’s autho…[Read more]