EDUCATION
Ph.D. English, 2003, University of Geneva, “Judgment in the American Gothic,” Deborah Madsen, dir. SUMMA CUM LAUDE
Ph.D. English, 1998, University of California, Irvine (UCI), “Reading for Genre: Nineteenth-Century American Gothic,” Dir. John Carlos Rowe.
M.A. English, 1991, University of California, Irvine (UCI), “Walter Benjamin and Film Theory,” Dir. John Carlos Rowe
B.A. English, 1989, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), MAGNA CUM LAUDE, College Honors, Departmental Highest Honors for Senior Thesis: “Anti-Detective Fiction: Thomas Pynchon, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Umberto Eco and Antonio Tabucchi”
PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS
2012- Professor of American Literature and Culture, University of Lausanne
2006-2012 Tenure-Track Assistant Professor, University of Lausanne
2001-2006 Lecturer in American Literature, University of Geneva
2002-2003 Guest Instructor, University of Zurich
1994-2001 Assistant in American Literature, English Department, University of Geneva
1994 Teaching Assistant for Modern U.S. Drama, UCI
1993 Research Assistant in Film Studies for Prof. Linda Williams, UCI
1992 Teaching Assistant, Comparative Literature and Film Studies
1989-91 Teaching Associate, Composition Program, UCI
1987-89 Composition Tutor, Academic Resources Center, UCLA
RECENT CONFERENCES ORGANIZED
Nov. 2022: Writing Contemporary Wars and Contemporary Militaries
March 2021 Member of organising committee for the Gothic Without Borders Conference: The Gothic in an Age of Contagion, Populism and Racial Inequality, based at Simon Fraser University
Sept. 2019: Narratives of (Un)Sustainability: Assessing U.S. Oil Culture
Nov. 2018: SANAS Biennial Conference: The Genres of Genre, Lausanne
Nov. 25-26, 2016: American Studies: Looking Forward and Backward, CUSO Doctoral Conference
May 2016: Gothic Study Day
Oct. 1 & 2, 2015: Transnational American Studies
Feb. 2015: Postfeminism
July 17 & 18, 2014: New Narratives of the Cold War (sponsored by UNIL & American Embassy)
Feb. 15 & 16, 2013: Gothic/Fantastic Figures of Race, Nation and Postcolonialism (CUSO doctoral school conference)
April 19 & 20, 2013: Affect, Emotion, Sentiment: The Language and Aesthetics of Feeling
RECENT CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS AND KEYNOTE ADDRESSES
2023 “Envisioning the Ecological Future,” Invited Talk at the University of Lodz, Poland.
2023 Envisioning the Ecological Emergency: Language and Narrative in the Climate Crisis
2022 “Eco-Horror from Underground: Monstrous Mycelium Movies,” International Gothic Association, Biennial Conference, University of Dublin
2022 “War as Adventure: Violence, Pleasure and Masculinity,” Adventure Novels as Popular Images and Texts Conference, University of Munich — ONLINE
2021 “War, Anthropocene, Imagination,” presentation as part of a panel on the “Militarized Anthropocene” at the Biennial EAAS Conference organised by the University of Warsaw — ONLINE
2019: “De-conditioning, Brainwashing or Enlightenment: LSD and the Psychedelic Revolution Against the Backdrop of War in the 1960s,” Basel Conference Presentation
2019: “War Gothic,” International Gothic Association, Chicago, Lewis University, Keynote Address
2019: “American Counterculture and the Hippie,” UNIL, Zelig Pub Public Lecture
2017 “Battlefield Gothic and War Horror,” Lancaster University, Keynote Address
2017 “War, Affect, Genre.” J.F.K. Kennedy Institute Research Colloquium Series, Free University, Berlin
2017 “The American Woman Warrior: A Transnational Feminist Look at War, Imperialism and Gender,” EAAS Women’s Network Conference, Lausanne
2017 “Adventure, Killing and the Pleasures of War,” Narrative Association Annual Conference, Lexington , Kentucky, USA
2016 “The Cultural Politics of Genre: War, Melodrama, Adventure.” Keynote lecture at the Polish American Studies Association Conference, Warsaw, November 2016.
2016 “Adventure, Killing and the Pleasures of War,” European Association of American Studies. Constanta, Romania
2015 “Transatlantic Gothic.” Invited lecture at the University of Bern, Nov. 2015.
2015 “From Iwo Jima to Iraq: Approaching Combat Death Through Genre.” Invited lecture in the American Studies Center Colloquium Series. April 14, 2015.
2015 “John Wayne and Post-War Paternity.” Invited lecture at the American Studies Center, Warsaw.
2015 “The White Terror”: Richard Wright and the Southern Gothic,” International Gothic Association Biennial Conference, Vancouver
2014 “Lincoln et la guerre,” Guest lecture at the Institute des Amériques, Université de Nice, Sophie Antipolis
2014 “The Adventure Genre, Or, the Sensationalist Origins of Naturalist and Modernist Fiction.” Invited lecture at the University of La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.
2014 “War Gothic.” Keynote at the All That Gothic International Conference, Lodz
October 2014 “War Gothic.” Keynote Lecture, All That Gothic Conference, Lodz, Poland
April 2014 “It’s Okay to Watch on the Monitor: Torture and Zero Dark Thirty,” European Association of American Studies, The Hague
November 2013 “Lincoln and War: The Gettysburg Address in American Culture” Inaugural Address, University of Lausanne
October 2013 “Monstrous Invasions, Contaminations, and Cross-Fertilizations: American Horror and European Cinema,” American Media-European Cultures: Negotations of Transnational Exchange, Munich
July 2013 “Night Vision Technology in the Contemporary Horror Film,” International Gothic Association Biennial Conference, Surrey, UK
June 2013 “Gothic and Fantastic: What’s the Difference?” Keynote at the X Coloquio Internacional de Literatura Fantastica: Paisajes goticos, Lausanne, June 2013
May 2013 “Blood Brothers: Nation, Combat and the Fraternal Metaphor,” Journée d’étude à l’Université de Bourgogne (Dijon): Time Heals all Wounds, Resisting the Authority of History in the Concepts of Nation and Nationalism, May 2013
April 2013 “Political Emotions: Civil Religion and Melodrama in Spielberg’s Lincoln,” SAUTE: Emotion, Affect and Sentiment, UNIL, April 2013
January 2013 “Maxine Hong Kingston as Counterculture Writer,” Journée d’études: Revolution and Utopias: Counter-Cultural Narratives in the U.S. 1960s, Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, Paris
2012 “Combat Death and the Cultural Work of Self-Sacrifice.” Melodrama: Staging Emotions in the Anglophone World, 1780-2010,” Berne University.
2012 “Race and Conflict in the Representation of the Iraq War: Over There and Generation Kill,” Swiss Association of North American Studies Biennial Conference, University of Zurich
2012 “Gender and Nationalism in Spanish-American War Fiction: Kirk Munroe’s Forward, March! (1899).” ESSE Biennial Conference, Istanbul, Turkey.
2012 “All Brothers Now: Performances of Race in Recent TV Series and Films of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.” MESEA Biennial Conference, Barcelona.
2012 The ‘Good High Days’: Maxine Hong Kingston and a Counterculture Politics of Dope.” The (Modern) Concept of Intoxication/Rausch International Conference, Albert-Ludwigs Universität, Freiburg
2011 “Batman as Gothic Hero,” Invited Lecture at the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland
2011 “Human Pets and Pretty Zombies: The Ethical Universe of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse,” International Gothic Association Biennial Conference, Heidelberg
2010 “The flower that blooms above the dead”: Flowers in the Visual Rhetoric of War Commemoration,” SANAS/AASA joint conference, Innsbruck, Austria
2010 “Black Like Me: Tropes of Racial Transformation in Contemporary American Cinema,” ESSE (European Society for the Study of English), Turin, Italy
2010 “Civil Religion, War and National Renewal,” EAAS Biennial Conference, Dublin, Ireland
2010 “Hemingway’s Poetics of Distantiation,” 14th Annual Hemingway conference, Lausanne
2009 “The Politics of Realism,” SANAS Annual Conference, Basel
2009 “Night Vision, Body Genres, and Female Monsters: Recent Trends in the Contemporary Horror Film,” International Gothic Association (IGA) Biennial Conference, Lancaster, UK
2009 “The Aesthetics of Cynical Cool: Male Writers and the Vietnam War,” Swiss Association of University Teachers of English Biennial Conference (SAUTE), Fribourg