CV

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)

CUSO-Race_Fantasy2

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