Assistant Professor
About
In my research, I draw on the history of science, aesthetics, and philosophy to understand how worlds are constructed through different media. My current book project examines the transition from an ancient understanding of media rooted in the elements of earth, air, fire, and water to the more technological media concept we recognize today, engaging with current work in elemental media theory. As my project aims to show, Romantic theorizations of artistic media around 1800 played a key role in this transition. Romantic visual artists, nature philosophers, and poets drew on classical theories of the elements to theorize their artistic media (such as language and color) as building blocks for the creation of new worlds. In this work, I am particularly interested in how Romantic artistic worldmaking intersects categories that modern thought traditionally holds separate, such as nature and artifice or mind and matter. I am also keen to explore the ways in which media and aesthetics in turn inform scientific understandings of ecology and cosmology.
Fields of interest:
- Media theory and aesthetics
- Environmental humanities
- 17 th to 21 st century literature and visual art
- Intellectual history
- Theater and dramaturgy
- Critical university studies
Publications:
- “Recognition and its Grounds in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King,” in The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory 99, no. 3 (2024): 323-339.
In progress:
- Book project: Elements of the Universe: Romantic Media and the Creation of New Worlds
- Article: “Universum” in Goethe Lexicon of Philosophical Concepts
- Article: “Union with the Universe: Intuition and Immediacy in Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Ueber die Religion (1799)”
