I am trained as a comparatist. For me, this means that my work spans literature and philosophy and early and late modernity.
Within this broad terrain, my scholarship tends to fall into two major areas. The first is a theoretically-informed approach to early modern and Enlightenment literature and philosophy. My first book, Cartesian Poetics: The Art of Thinking, is an instance of this trajectory, as is a current project, Literature’s Cause, a monograph about causality, accident, and ground in early modern rationalism and literature. Read more here.
A second area of my research is more widely and wildly comparative across theoretical frameworks and centuries. Notes on Clapping, the other academic monograph I am currently writing, is representative of this area of my scholarship. It is about clapping. I describe the project in greater detail here.
Meanwhile, several essays are scheduled to appear later this year and into next on such topics as rhetorical delivery, clowns, and Kierkegaard; Gillian Rose and Janus; and causality and reading.
For two years now, I have been series co-editor of Thinking Literature at the University of Chicago Press.
Since 2014, I have taught at NYU where I have a joint appointment at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study and, in the College of Arts and Science, in the Department of Comparative Literature where I am finishing my term as Director of Graduate Studies. While I was a graduate student, I taught at UC Berkeley and San Quentin State Prison.
I received my Ph.D. from UC Berkeley’s Department of Comparative Literature, and I earned my A.B. from Washington University in St. Louis where I double-majored in French and Classics.
I live in Manhattan with the designer of my website and a black cat named Rem.