Publications
Currently, I write for the blog hosted by the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. Click through to read the following posts:
“Teaching with Technology: Using a Virtual Learning Community and Peer Mentoring to Create an Interdisciplinary Intervention.” Co-authored with Nadia Benakli and Pamela Brown. Science Education and Civic Engagement: An International Journal 11.1 (Winter 2019),
This peer-reviewed project report appears in a journal focused on the scholarship of teaching and learning. In it, my co-authors and I discuss a non-enrollment-linked, interdisciplinary learning community that we created using City Tech’s OpenLab. My English class participated, as did a section of Prof. Benakli’s math class and a chemistry class. Associate Provost Pam Brown was a co-author of the report as well, providing advice and support throughout the project. The project was supported by a grant from the Helmsley Foundation. Read the article here.
“Miracle Kitchens and Bachelor Pads: The Competing Narratives of Modern Spaces,” InHabit, edited by Jane Anderson, Antony buxton, and Linda Hulin. Oxford UK: Peter Lang, 2017, 153-171.
This invited book chapter takes a gendered look at food preparation spaces in fiction and advertisements of the mid-twentieth century. The chapter is a development of a conference paper given at the Spatial Perspectives: Literature and Architecture conference at Oxford, UK, in June 2012. Click here to read the chapter.
“‘You don’t prepare breakfast… you launch it like a missile’: The Cold War Kitchen and Technology’s Displacement of Home,” in Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900 to Present), 13.1 (Spring 2014). A reading of kitchens in texts by Arthur Miller and Ray Bradbury, contextualized with discussions of domestic rhetoric in Good Housekeeping and Nixon’s kitchen debate with Khrushchev.
“‘I know how to do the play now’: A Part of Willy Loman in Synecdoche, New York. The Arthur Miller Journal 6.2 (Fall 2011): 25-45.
This scholarly article describes my use of two seemingly incompatible texts – a contemporary film and a mid-century play – in a composition course. I write about the ways in which viewing the film allowed students to draw specific conclusions about the character of Willy Loman. In the article, I analyze both the play and the film, and I include anonymous examples of student writing demonstrating the results of this pedagogical approach. The Arthur Miller Journal, edited by Steve Marino, is an academic journal housed at St. Francis College and published twice a year with the cooperation of the Arthur Miller Society and the Arthur Miller Center at the University of East Anglia. Click here to read the article.
This article grew from an earlier conference presentation: “‘Everyone’s the Star of their Own Play’: Using Synecdoche, New York to Teach Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.” This paper was presented at the International Conference on American Drama, Union, NJ, October 30, 2010. Supported by funds from PDAC.
Presentations
“Discovering / Desiring / Devouring the Other: The Outsider Storyteller and Ethnographic Cookbooks.” Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention, Philadelphia, PA, 5 January 2024. This paper examines the use of narrative elements to establish credibility in travel cookbooks written by outsiders to the region.
“Rice Stories: Rituals of Prosperity and Fertility.” Presented at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, Oxford, UK, and Online, July 2023.
This paper and presentation contributed to the 2023 symposium’s theme of Rituals, examining the ways that rice-based symbolism performs archetypal work across cultures. Looking at the use of rice in mythology, essays, and short stories, my paper demonstrates the ways that figurative uses of rice in literature are derived from its ritual uses within a culture, which often are connected to marital or familial happiness and economic prosperity. See the recorded presentation here.
“Preserving the American Dream: Modern Refrigerators in Mid-Century Fiction.” Presented at Representations of Home in Literatures and Cultures in English, University of Lisbon, Portugal, June 2023.
This conference paper looks at electric refrigerators in three mid-century texts by American men (Jack Kerouac, Ray Bradbury, and Arthur Miller), illuminating the gendered ways that the new modern appliances helped their fictional owners preserve patriarchal and heteronormative ideals in the unsettled and anxious early days of the Cold War.
“Through the Stomach: Food Fiction as Feminist Subterfuge in the Novels of Sally Andrew and Bonnie Garmus.” Presented at the Midwest Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN, 17-20 Nov 2022.
“A Taste of Privilege: Toward an Ethics of Gastro-Tourism.” Presented at the International Conference on Food Studies: ‘Culinary Evolutions,'” London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, 20-21 Aug 2022 (online).
“‘Get busy with the can opener, will you, Sally?’: The Legacy of the Fallout Shelter in Contemporary Prepper Foodways,” presented at Devouring Men: Food, Masculinity and Power conference, hosted by the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, 4 Sept 2020 (online).
I’m working to update this section. Please see my CV at this link for a full list of publications and presentations.
Invited Talks
I’ve had the distinct honor to serve as a guest lecturer in several classes, giving me the opportunity to demonstrate not only my research interests but also my methods of teaching them. Also included here is an invited talk at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, which focused on writing pedagogy.
“The Housewife in Post-War American Culture.” Prof. Brad Fox. Drew University, 7 September 2021. Click here to see the recorded remote lecture.
“Suburban Narratives and Playboy Escapes”. Class title: “The Tranquilized Fifties.” Profs. Michael Thurston and Vic Katz. Northampton, MA: Smith College, 28 Nov 2018. Honorarium.
“Fallout Shelters in American Consciousness.” Class title: “US in the World.” Prof. Karen Miller. Long Island City, NY: LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, 5 Nov 2018.
“Designing Effective Writing Assignments and Responding to Student Writing.” Co-presented with Prof. Marianna Bonanome. Presentation to Math Faculty at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, September 23, 2014. Honorarium.
