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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 of 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
“Anesthetic Reading: Ether, Nitrous Oxide, and Nineteenth-Century Interpretation,” New Literary History (2026). This essay was awarded the 2025 Ralph Cohen Prize.
“Goethe, Darwin, and the Spiral Tendency of Dickinson’s Letters,” The Emily Dickinson Journal (2026).
“Aphoristic Transcendentalism: Baconian Science and Centrifugal Inquiry in Emerson and Thoreau,” The New England Quarterly (2026).
“‘Two Stories Tangled Together’: The Double Brain, Pudd’nhead Wilson, and Those Extraordinary Twins,” Nineteenth-Century Literature (2025).
Upcoming Events
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 Small Forms in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture.
Fall 2026–Winter 2027: I will present “Emerson, Bacon, and Aphoristic Science,” a paper drawn from my ongoing book project, at universities across Germany:
November 16, 2026: Institute of English and American Studies, Universität Hamburg
November 24, 2026: Institute of English and American Studies, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
January 21, 2027: Heidelberg Center for American Studies, Universität Heidelberg
See abstracts from my recent conference presentations here.
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