ADMINISTRATIVE APPOINTMENTS
- Director of English Doctoral School, Occidental Switzerland (CUSO), 2017-2024
- Head of English Department, 2022-24
- Head of English Department, 2015-2017
- Director of New American Studies Masters Specialization Program, 2013-present
PRIZES
The Russel B. Nye Award for the Outstanding Article in the Journal of Popular Culture award: “American War Adventure and the Generic Pleasures of Military Violence: Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper” Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 51, Issue 6, Dec. 2018.
KEYNOTE AND INVITED ADDRESSES
2025 “The Language of Integration: The Power and Powerlessness of Words in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy,” ALPS Summer School, Vaumarcus, Switzerland
2024 “The 2024 Presidential Election: What Happened and Why,” Invited Address to Swiss Parliamentarians of the Socialist Party, Bern
2024 “The Counterculture and its Influence on the War on Drugs,” Invited Guest Talk for the Swiss Society of Psychedelic Medicine
2024 “California Gothic,” Roundtable at the International Gothic Association (IGA) Biennial Conference, Halifax, Canada
2023 “Envisioning the Ecological Future,” Invited Talk at the University of Lodz, Poland.
2022 “Psychedelics in Literature and Culture: 1950s to the Present.” Invited Talk at the University of Freiburg, Germany
2022 “LSD and the 1960s Counterculture.” Presentation at the invitation of the Psychedelic Awareness Association of Lausanne. UNIL.
2022 “War as Adventure: Violence, Pleasure and Masculinity,” Invited Talk at the Interdisciplinary Conference on Adventure Narratives in Popular Images and Texts, University of Munich (online)
2021 “Apocalypse, Utopia and Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopian Vision,” Keynote at the Consumption, Sufficiency and Futures Imaginaries International Workshop at the University of Geneva
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 “War Gothic,” Keynote at the International Gothic Association Biennial Conference, Lewis University, Chicago
2017 “Progress, Utopia, and Apocalypse: The Overlapping Temporalities of the 19th Century,” Keynote at the 3rd Biennial Conference of the British Association of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, University of Exeter
2017 “War, Affect, Genre.” John F. Kennedy Institute, Free University, Berlin
2017 “The American Woman Warrior: A Transnational Feminist Look at War, Imperialism and Gender.” EAAS Women’s Studies Network Conference, UNIL
2016 “The Current State of American Studies.” Keynote lecture at the Polish American Studies Association Conference. November 2016.
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.
2014 “Lincoln et la guerre,” Guest lecture at the Institute des Amériques, Université de Nice, Sophia 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
2013 “The Transnational Zombie: Postcolonial Memory and Rage in the Recent European Horror Film.” Invited lecture at American Media conference, Munich.
2013 “Gothic and Fantastic: What’s the Difference?” Keynote at the X Coloquio Internacional de Literatura Fantastica: Paisajes goticos, Lausanne
CONFERENCE ORGANIZATION
2024 Altered States of Consciousness and Literature, English Doctoral School 3-day Workshop, Crêt-Bérard
2024 Reconsidering the Human and Humanism in the Environmental Humanities, English Doctoral School Conference, UNIL
2023 Progression, Regression, and Transgression in Gothic World Literature & Film: New Approaches to the Ethics of Difference, International Gothic Association, A Gothic-Without-Borders Conference, Simon Fraser University, ONLINE
2023 Queer Theory and Literary Study, English Doctoral School Conference, UNIL
2023 The Ecological Emergency: The Role of Language and Narrative in Ecological Change, English Department Lecture Series, UNIL
2022 Writing Contemporary Wars and Contemporary Militaries: Film and Literature of Military Interventions from the Persian Gulf to the Present. Conference at UNIL
2021 Talking about Race and Racism. Conference cycle in Autumn 2021 at UNIL
2019 Narratives of (Un)Sustainability. Conference at UNIL
2017 PHD Day, Interviews and Mindful Writing Strategies, UNIL
2017 American Studies: Looking Backwards and Forwards, CUSO Workshop with Cynthia Wu (SUNY Buffalo) and Tomasz Basiuk (American Studies Center, University of Warsaw)
2016 American Gothic Study Day (with invited speakers from Lancaster University and Manchester Metropolitan University)
2015 Transnational American Studies, UNIL (CUSO workshop with invited speakers from University of Graz and Uppsala University)
2014 New Narratives of the Cold War, UNIL (International Conference with 50 participants, including invited speakers from Univeristy of Kentucky and CUNY)
2014 Postfeminism, UNIL (Doctoral School conference with Angela McRobbie and Rosalind Gill)
2013 Emotion, Affect and Sentiment: The Language and Literature of Feeling, SAUTE (Swiss Association of University Teachers of English)
2013 Gothic Figures of Race, UNIL (with invited speakers from Manchester Metropolitan University and University of Brighton)
2011 Literature and Altered States Doctoral Colloquium, Crêt Bérard, Switzerland
2009 Crossing the Americas/Cruzas las Americas: Hemispheric American Studies, Geneva and Lausanne
2008 Reading Visual Media International Colloquium, Crêt-Bérard
2008 Writing American Women: Gender, Text, Performance Conference, Crêt-Bérard 2007 American Counterculture Conference, University of Lausanne
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
2024 “Sur la route avec Eo,” Comparative Literature Conference (CIEL): Premier rôle aux animaux autres qu’humains dans les fictions : Agentivité, expérience, point de vue, UNIL
2024 “’James Baldwin in Switzerland: ‘A Stranger in the Village’” for a Study Day on Pierre Koralnik, organized by the UNIL Cinema Department and the Cinemathèque Suisse, Lausanne
2024 “Fungal Transcendence: Psychedelic Sequences in Mushroom Horror,” International Gothic Association (IGA) Biennial Conference, Halifax, Canada
2024 “Sustainability in Humanities Research,” Roundtable at the Faculty of Arts Research Day, UNIL
2023 “The Ecological Emergency: The Role of Language and Narrative,” UNIL
2022 “Mushroom Horror.” International Gothic Association, Trinity College University, Dublin.
2022 “War as Adventure: Pleasure, Violence and Masculinity,” International Conference: From Âventiure Novels to Adventure Games: Adventure Narratives in Popular Images and Texts, University of Munich, ONLINE
2021 “How to Speak about Race and Racism in the Classroom,” UNIL
2021 “War, Anthropocene, Imagination,” “Militarized Anthropocene” Panel, EAAS Biennial Conference, Warsaw ONLINE
2019 “Haunted Trees and Dead People, Apocalypse Nowadays,” Haunted Nature Conference, University of Würzburg
2019 Participation in Round Table on “Primitivism in Literature,” French Department, UNIL
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 “Adventure, Killing and the Pleasures of War,” Narrative Conference, Lexington, KY
2016 “From Brook Farm to Burning Man: Alternative Communities in the United States,” Swiss Association for North American Studies, Bern
2016 “Adventure, Killing and the Pleasures of War,” European Association of American Studies. Constanta, Romania
2015 “The White Terror”: Richard Wright and the Southern Gothic,” International Gothic Association Biennial Conference, Vancouver
2014 “It’s Okay to Watch on the Monitor: Torture and Zero Dark Thirty,” European Association of American Studies (EAAS), The Hague
2013 “Lincoln and War: The Gettysburg Address in American Culture,” Inaugural Address, University of Lausanne
2013 “Monstrous Invasions, Contaminations, and Cross-Fertilizations: American Horror and European Cinema,” American Media-European Cultures: Negotations of Transnational Exchange, Munich
2013 “Night Vision Technology in the Contemporary Horror Film,” International Gothic Association Biennial Conference, Surrey, UK
2013 “Gothic and Fantastic: What’s the Difference?” Keynote at the X Coloquio Internacional de Literatura Fantastica: Paisajes goticos, Lausanne, June 2013
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
2013 “Political Emotions: Civil Religion and Melodrama in Spielberg’s Lincoln,” SAUTE: Emotion, Affect and Sentiment, UNIL, April 2013
2013 “Maxine Hong Kingston as Counterculture Writer,” Journée d’étude: 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
GRANTS AND SCHOLARSHIPS
2014 Grant, Cultural Affairs, U.S. Embassy, Bern, for conference: New Narratives of the Cold War
2009 Grant, FNS, for conference on: Crossing the Americas/Cruzar las Américas
2009 Grant, Fondation du 450ème for conference: Crossing the Americas/Cruzar las Américas
2009 Grant, Cultural Affairs, U.S. Embassy, Bern, for conference: Crossing the Americas
2004 Grant, Cultural Affairs, U.S. Embassy, Bern, for Study Trip to New York for students
in advanced seminar on Hart Crane’s “The Bridge”
- Grant, Cultural Affairs, U.S. Embassy, Bern, to attend “Theories of American
Culture” Conference, John F. Kennedy-Institute, Free University, Berlin.
1990 Fellowship, Kosciuszko Foundation, UCI
1988 Richard Carleton Meeker, Jr. Memorial Scholarship, UCLA
MEMBER, PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AND NETWORKS
Scientific Committee, PSYCHE, UNIL-CHUV
Advisory Board, American Gothic Studies Journal
Editorial Board Member for Horror Studies, Book Series, University of Wales Press
Editorial Board Member, Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, Universidad de La Laguna
Editorial Board Member, “Transatlantic Aesthetics and Culture,” Peter Lang Publishers
Member, Swiss Association of North American Studies
SAUTE, Swiss Association of University Teachers of English
EAAS, European Association of American Studies
ASA, American Studies Association
European Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment
Cultural Studies Association
International Gothic Association
Modern Language Association
Popular Culture Association
PERSONAL DETAILS
Date of Birth April 9, 1968
Nationality Swiss, Polish, USA