Biography

I hold an MA (with distinction) in English Literature from the University of York (2008). My MA thesis looked at the early work of poet George Oppen through the lens of Edward Said's notion of 'worldliness'.

Prior to this I received a BA in American and English Literature from the University of East Anglia (2006). As an undergraduate I spent a year abroad at San Francisco State University, during which time I worked as an intern helping to sort and index the Jack Spicer archives at UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library.

Outside academia I have worked in local political campaigning and in local government.

I came to Sussex in 2010 to begin my PhD.

Role

PhD candidate and Associate Tutor in American Literature

Activities

I sit on the editorial board of Excursions, an interdisciplinary journal based in the English Department at Sussex.

My thesis is provisionally titled 'Modern and contemporary American poetry and the idea of the state'. It looks firstly at the ways in which the work of a number of American poets, including Ezra Pound, Jack Spicer, and Lisa Jarnot, have conceived of the state in their work.Conversely, it investigates the ways the state manifests as a determinant factor in poetic production, whether by ideological or material means. My work is deeply interdisciplinary, drawing on political, sociological and historiographical work in state theory, and is funded by the AHRC.

More broadly, my research interests include twentieth- and twenty-first-century American poetry, modernism and postmodernism, and the intersections between literature, politics and theory.

Autumn 2011: The Look of America (Associate Tutor)

Spring 2013: The Look of America (Associate Tutor)

Student Consultation

Spring 2013: Wednesday, 1–4 in Arts A180.