I am interested in how literature and media help us understand power, politics, and social values in today’s world. Here are some projects that I have been working on.

Urban Literature and Culture

My primary interest is in urban literature and culture from the modernist period to the present.

My doctoral dissertation, “Urban Walking: Configuring the Modern City as Cultural and Spatial Practice,” is an exploration of the aesthetics of spatial politics and the politics of spatial aesthetics in urban literature and culture from the early twentieth century to the post-industrial era. The dissertation contends that the experience of the city on foot not only replicates but profoundly shapes social relations and identities, helping with the progressive transformation of space and society. By pivoting between theory and practice, text and visual, the study advances the field of urban walking as a dynamic and under-explored scholarly space for politically engaged interventions responding to the economic, gender, racial, and ecological urgencies of our era.

My dissertation research was featured on York University Magazine (Winter 2019). Check it out: “Boulevards of Dreams.”  

I am currently preparing for a monograph manuscript developed from my doctoral research.

Creative Resilience and COVID-19

Since March 2020, I have made a significant pivot in my work to explore the social and cultural dimensions of the COVID-19 pandemic. With Irene Gammel, I have developed and cohosted the MLC Pandemic Webinar Series in response to the urgent issues induced by the global health crisis. This on-going webinar series has featured over 60 scholars and public intellectuals with an international following.

Irene Gammel and I have co-edited a book, Creative Resilience and COVID-19: Figuring the Everyday in a Pandemic, with contributors from Canada, Germany, Kazakhstan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. By taking a communication and culture focus, the collection of essays explores arts, culture and everyday life as a way of navigating through and past COVID-19. The book was published in Routledge’s COVID-19 Pandemic Series in March 2022.