My research looks at the rise of computing in recent decades and asks how it has shaped our habits of reading and writing. From internet publishing to Google search to Large Language Models like ChatGPT, our access to text is increasingly mediated by sophisticated computing systems. Through a series of linked case studies, my dissertation takes up each of these examples, in order to understand how they comprise a new ecology of fictional writing.

Methodologically, my research blends familiar techniques from literary study with those of properly computational disciplines. Sometimes called “distant reading,” my scholarship brings together archival research and close reading with linguistics and statistical modeling. When used reflexively, this approach not only yields empirical findings, but it exposes their computational underpinnings as well.

I have previously published on American fiction in the second half of the twentieth century. In the articles below, I use reflexive modeling to study the racial and economic logics that animate the period.

Publications

“Against Conglomeration: Nonprofit Publishing and American Literature After 1980.”

co-authored with Dan Sinykin. Journal of Cultural Analytics and Post45. April 2021. doi.org/10.22148/001c.22331 [pdf]

“Race and Distant Reading.”

co-authored with Richard Jean So. PMLA. Jan 2020. doi:10.1632/pmla.2020.135.1.59 [pdf]

Research Assistant

Transcriptions Center, UC Santa Barbara; 2020-21

WhatEvery1Says, UC Santa Barbara; 2016-20

Digital Arts & Humanities Commons, UC Santa Barbara; 2017-18

Chicago TextLab, University of Chicago; 2014-16