I work on early American literature from the colonial period through the nineteenth century, and my research centres on the environmental humanities and the histories of science and philosophy. My current book project focuses on settler colonial and Indigenous depictions of swarming insects and argues that the experience of the swarm is one of ecological relations with the natural world. Drawing on works by writers including Jonathan Edwards, William Bartram, and David Cusick, I explore the implications that ecological thinking has for various environmental theories, epistemological systems, and philosophies of identity. A second project examines colonial medicine’s methodology for diagnosing pregnancy on Caribbean plantations and the philosophical and material repercussions these techniques create for early American thought and for women’s bodies.
