Languages and Literature, University of Warwick
Thesis title:
My project examines examples of 1970s and 1980s American horror fiction and film in which sentient objects or objects animated by nonhuman nature (meteorites, comets, a lightning storm) attack and (in some cases) kill humans. The working argument is that commodities in these narratives become monstrous at this time (1970s, 1980s) due to convulsions in the world-system. It seems that narratives about killer commodities proliferate in times of economic downturn. Central to my reading of these object narratives is the way in which all the things the capitalist world-system is built on (the expropriation and exhaustion of nature, social reproductive labor, waged labor, slave labor) return in monstrous form in these texts. When taken together, the objects that populate the narratives under discussion present the whole history of commodity capitalism from its provenance in plantation slavery and agriculture to the neoliberal regime of accumulation.
Monograph
2022 Reading the Vegetarian Vampire, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–133.
Chapter in edited book
Forthcoming 'Breakfast at eight, lunch at two: Mealtimes and the Importance of Eating Rituals in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897)'. Monstrous Appetites, edited by Simon Bacon and Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska, Routledge.
Forthcoming 'Rape of the Land: Jerry London's Killdozer [provisional title],' Horrific Movies of the Week! 1970s Made-for-TV Horror Films and Society, edited by Marcus Harmes and Mark Fryers, Liverpool Univeristy Press.
Peer reviewed articles
2023 'Storying Species Extinction in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,' Superheroes, special issue of Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 12, no. 1, July 2023, pp. 37–48. doi: 10.1386/ajpc_00067_1.
2021 'Anthropocene Disease and the Undead in V Wars,' Aeternum: The Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies, vol. 8, no. 2, Dec. 2021, pp. 17–32.
2020 'Vegetarian Vampires of the Anthropocene: Re-reading the Animal-blood Diet in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight,' WRITING CLIMATE, special issue of Colloquy: Text, Theory, Critique, no. 39, Dec. 2020, pp. 42–62. doi: 10.26180/13324943.
Blog
2025 'The Anthropocene Unconscious of Jerry London's Killdozer! (1974),' Journal for Studies in the Fantastic, posted 27 Sept. 2024, https://utampapress.org/the-anthropocene-unconscious-of-jerry-londons-killdozer-1974.
Media
2023 'VV4 – Interview with the Vampire, Series 1,' Unseen Academicals: A Discworld and Terry Pratchett Podcast, open.spotify.com/show/53rp8zzKoHl5OBjxeFI6KL?si=ef633c34fef0498e.
2023 'VV3 – Vegetarian Vampires After Discworld,' Unseen Academicals: A Discworld and Terry Pratchett Podcast, open.spotify.com/show/53rp8zzKoHl5OBjxeFI6KL?si=ef633c34fef0498e.
2023 'VV2 – Vegetarian Vampires in Discworld,' Unseen Academicals: A Discworld and Terry Pratchett Podcast, open.spotify.com/show/53rp8zzKoHl5OBjxeFI6KL?si=ef633c34fef0498e.
2023 'VV1 – Vegetarian Vampires Before Discworld,' Unseen Academicals: A Discworld and Terry Pratchett Podcast, open.spotify.com/show/53rp8zzKoHl5OBjxeFI6KL?si=ef633c34fef0498e.
2026 'Capitals Hungry House: Degradation and Rejuvination in Robert Marasco's Burnt Offerings (1973).' Horror Studies Now Conference, University of Northumbria, United Kingdom.
2026. 'There Goes the Neighbourhood: Capitalism and Crisis in Anne Rivers Siddons' The House Next Door (1978).' ASLE-UKI Postgraduate Conference, University of Chichester, United Kingdom.
2025 'Bulldozing the environment: Jerry London's Killdozer! (1974).' Horror Studies Now Conference, University of Northumbria, United Kingdom.
2025 '''You can't do this. We made you!': Object Horror in the Anthropocene.' Cultural Studies Association of Australia, University of Melbourne, Australia.
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