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I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of American Culture and Literature at Bilkent University (Ankara, Türkiye), where I also teach in the Program in Cultures, Civilizations and Ideas. I earned my PhD in English and American Literature at Washington University in St. Louis. I specialize in nineteenth-century American and transatlantic literature, literature and science, and the environmental humanities.
I am the President-Elect for the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society, and I also serve as Associate Editor for The Concord Saunterer: A Journal of Thoreau Studies.
I will be on sabbatical during the Fall 2026 semester, during which time I will be hosted by the Institute of English and American Studies at Universität Hamburg (Germany).
Book Project
My current book project, Aphoristic Science: Ecology, Psychology, and Nineteenth-Century American Literature, argues that a speculative style of writing—which I identify with the open-ended aphorism—undergirds the emergence of new scientific inquiry in the nineteenth century. I trace this style in chapters on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, William James, and W.E.B. Du Bois. More information is available here.
I am also co-editing Small Forms in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture (under contract with Edinburgh UP).
Recent Writing
My essay, “Anesthetic Reading: Ether, Nitrous Oxide, and Nineteenth-Century Interpretation,” was awarded the 2025 Ralph Cohen Prize and will appear in an upcoming issue of New Literary History.
“‘Two Stories Tangled Together’: The Double Brain, Pudd’nhead Wilson, and Those Extraordinary Twins,” Nineteenth-Century Literature (2025).
“A Thoreauvian at Quarry Farm,” Quarry Farm Testimonial, Center for Mark Twain Studies (August 2025).
Upcoming Events
June 6, 2026 (Virtual): With Páraic Finnerty (U Portsmouth), I co-hosted an online discussion on Emerson, Dickinson, and poetics. A recording of the discussion is available on YouTube.
July 24–26, 2026 (Virtual): At the Emily Dickinson International Society (EDIS) annual meeting, I will participate in the special online symposium, “Forever – is composed of Nows –: Twenty-First-Century Dickinson Scholarship.” An abstract and PDF copy of my presentation is available here.
October 22–25, 2026 (Baltimore, Maryland, USA): At the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW), I will present the paper “Transcendentalist ‘Waste-Books’ and Empirical Observation” as part of the panel “American Literary Fragments and Other Short Forms.” This paper is based on my contribution for the collection Small Forms in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, which I am co-editing with Madeline Zehnder (Humboldt U Berlin).
See abstracts from my recent conference presentations here.
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