Upcoming Presentations

“‘Under the stars faded by pollution:’ Visions of Dystopic Los Angeles and Futuristic Ecologies in Cynthia Kadohata’s In the Heart of the Valley of Love,” Modern Language Association Annual Convention (MLA), San Francisco, CA, 5-8 January 2023

“Contemporary Depictions of Deer Woman’s Righteous Violence in Indigenous Comics and Visual Media,” Modern Language Association Annual Convention (MLA), San Francisco, CA, 5-8 January 2023

“Post-Apocalyptic Presence of Mind: The Dystopic Imagination in Los Angeles Fiction,” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Annual Conference (PAMLA), Los Angeles, CA 11-13 November 2022

Conference Papers Presented

“‘To Whom it May Concern’: Car Culture and Antiblack Racism in Ralph Ellison’s Writings,” American Literature Association Conference (ALA), Chicago, IL, 26-29 May 2022

“Visualizing the Visit: Layered Travels in Vietnamese-American Graphic Narratives,” Modern Language Association Annual Convention (MLA), Washington, DC, 6-9 January 2022

“Antidevelopmental Automobility in John Okada’s No-No Boy,” American Studies Association Annual Meeting (ASA), San Juan, PR, 7-10 October 2021

“‘The More Things Change’: Internment Narratives and the Long Twentieth-Century,” American Literature Association Annual Conference (ALA), Boston, MA 7-11 July 2021

“Dystopic Walls, Hopeful Lands: Reversing Expansion in Post-Apocalyptic Fiction,” Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present Annual Conference (ASAP), Salt Lake City, UT, 15-17 October 2020 [canceled due to COVID-19]

“Narratives of Transformation in Native American and First Nations Women’s Comics,” International Conference on Narrative, New Orleans, LA, 5-8 March 2020

“Flight and Fight: Apocalyptic World Building in the Speculative Fiction of Louise Erdrich and Rebecca Roanhorse,” American Studies Association Annual Meeting (ASA), Honolulu, HI, 7-10 November 2019

“Narrative Instability as Fictional Power in LeAnne Howe’s Shell Shaker,” Modern Language Association Annual Convention (MLA), Chicago, IL, 3-6 January 2018

“Driving To, Driving Through: The Road as Performed Space in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child,” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Annual Conference(PAMLA), Western Washington University, 9-11 November 2018

“Demanding Representation in the Narrative Hijinks of Erika Lopez’s Flaming Iguanas,”International Conference on Narrative, McGill University, 19-22 April 2018

“Travels with Turtle in Search of Kinship,” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference (ACLA), UC Los Angeles, 29 March-1 April 2018

“Critical Pedagogy Initiative: Why Teach Literature?” (with Corinne Bancroft), Modern Language Association Annual Convention (MLA), New York, NY, 4-7 January 2018

“The Altering Axes and Common Coordinates of Cynthia Kadohata’s The Floating World and Luis Alberto Urrea’s Into the Beautiful North,” Thinking Its Presence: The Ephemeral Archive Conference, University of Arizona, 19-21 October 2017

“The Affective Road Trip in Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt,” American Literature Association Annual Conference (ALA), Boston, MA, 25-28 May 2017

“Limits of Ideology on Utopia in Marianne Wiggin’s John Dollar,” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Annual Conference (PAMLA), Pasadena, CA, 11-13 November 2016

“‘What Did They Expect to Find?:’ Audience and Intention in Wanda Coleman’s The World Falls Away,” 5th Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference “Re/Inventions: Alterna[rra]tives,” CSU Long Beach, 7 April 2014

“Performing Agency to Take the Blame in LeAnne Howe’s Shell Shaker,” Modern Language Association Annual Convention (MLA), Vancouver, Canada, 8-11 January

“Memory as Identity in Contemporary Native American Literature,” 3rd Annual Native American Studies Graduate Student Symposium, UC Davis, 17-18 April

Conference Organization

Panels Co-organizer, “Postwar Mobilities” & “Postwar Stases & Entrapments I & II,” American Literature Association Annual Conference (ALA), Chicago, IL, 26-29 May 2022

Panels Co-organizer, “Post-45 State of the Field” & “Climate and the Postwar Poem,” American Literature Association Annual Conference (ALA), San Diego, CA, Boston, MA 7-11 July 2021

Panel Chair, “Race, Place, and Epistemological Standpoint in Comics and Graphic Narratives,” American Literature Association Annual Conference (ALA), San Diego, CA, 21-24 May 2020 [canceled due to COVID-19]

Panel Co-organizer, “Imagining the Future of Resistance: Speculative Fiction and the Aesthetics of Social Transformation,” American Studies Association Annual Meeting (ASA), Honolulu, HI, 7-10 November 2019

Panels Organizer, “Urban Poetry I: Riots and Rebels” & “Urban Poetry II: Politicizing Performance Spaces,” American Literature Association Annual Conference (ALA), San Francisco, CA, 24- 27 May 2018

Panel Organizer, “Off the Road: Travel and Road Trip Narratives, Fragments, and Aesthetics,” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference (ACLA), UC Los Angeles, 29 March-1 April 2018

Conference Organizer, The American Cultures and Global Contexts Center Conference: Contact: The Sovereign Body and Realized Zones of Community,” UC Santa Barbara, 23 April 2016

Panel Organizer, “Choctalking and Shell Shaking with LeAnne Howe,” Modern Language Association Annual Convention (MLA), Vancouver, Canada, 8-11 January 2015

Roundtables

“Indigenous Literary Pedagogies: How and Why I Teach ______,” Roundtable sponsored by the forum on Indigenous Literatures of the United States and Canada, Modern Language Association (MLA), Washington, DC, 6-9 January 2022

“Communities Over Prisons and Policing,” Roundtable at the Women’s Center, UC Santa Barbara, 12 February 2020

“Humanities Behind Bars: Notes on Abolitionist Praxis and Captive Study,” Roundtable at the Modern Language Association (MLA), Seattle, WA 9-12 January 2020

“Teaching Foundations in the Humanities to Incarcerated Students,” Humanities in Prison Symposium, UC Santa Barbara, 26 April 2018