Different houses built on the same foundation →

In this article for the British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS) postgraduate blog, I offer an academic review of the New York Times bestselling novel trilogy, Shades of Magic by V.E. Schwab. The series, which reached its thrilling conclusion with the final novel, A Conjuring of Light, on February 21, 2017, is set in four alternate-history parallel-universe versions of London in the year 1819. Using research in nineteenth-century scientific discourse, readings of works by Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker, and recent scholarship in Victorian studies, I argue that Schwab’s novel invokes the language of early experiments in electricity and magnetism to configure both biological and spiritual ideas of life and death.

And, for fans of the series, I also offer my academic take (as someone writing a dissertation that came out of Dracula) on the whole "Alucard is Dracula spelled backwards" debate. Enjoy!

Click here to read the full article on The Victorianist.

Book Review forthcoming in SFS

If you've been around a lot of Science Studies scholars lately, Donna Haraway's newest book, Staying with the Trouble, is a rightfully hot topic of conversation. But its large amount of new theoretical terminology, particularly its conspicuously long third chapter on "sympoiesis," can make it a bit of a time-commitment to read. Luckily, I spent virtually all of January digging my tentacles deep into the text, and weaving a thready web of all its arguments together into one concise book review. (Puns very much intended.)

Look for "Not that Cthulu," a review of Donna Haraway's Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, forthcoming in Science Fiction Studies, July 2017.

She seems dead, but she's a vampire, right? →

In this article for the British Association of Victorian Studies (BAVS) postgraduate blog, I position Carmilla the web series (2014-2016) as a feminist retelling of J. Sheridan Le Fanu's 1871 vampire story, which remediates Carmilla's character through millennial webculture. By saturating Carmilla the character with pop culture awareness, the series depicts the vampire as a centuries-old cultural repository, whose up-to-date-ness pushes her toward the side of good rather than evil. Similarly, because it takes place in an almost-real-yet-partly-science-fictional universe, explores a sophisticated relationship between Carmilla and Laura, and includes other characters with complex gender identities and sexualities, Carmilla the series reclaims the Victorian sensationalist story in order to envision a speculative queer utopia. 

Click here to read the full article on The Victorianist.