EMPLOYMENT
2025 – Present, Assistant Professor of English, Cedar Crest College
2025, American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellow (Offer declined)
EDUCATION
Ph.D, English, Minor in American Indian Studies, Certificate in Criticism and Interpretative Theory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, August 2025
MA, English, Certificate in Pacific Islands Studies, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, May 2019
BA, English, University of Maryland, College Park, May 2016
RESEARCH INTERESTS
- Pacific Islands Studies
- Victorian literature
- Sound Studies
- New Formalism
- Indigenous methodology and theory
- Indigenous literature in Australia and the Pacific
- Gender, class, and race in the colonies
DISSERTATION
“Trans-Pacific Soundscapes: Oral Storytelling as a Trans-Pacific Aesthetic in the Colonial Encounter.” Advisors: Dr. Deena Rymhs and Dr. Gillen Wood.
PUBLICATIONS
With William Pierce. “‘An Idea of a Boundary’: The Dispossession of Knowledge in Illinois State Prisons.” Epistemic Carcerality and Education Special Issue. Educational Philosophy and Theory. Forthcoming.
A Resonant Ecology by Max Ritts (review). Western American Literature 60, no. 3 (Fall 2025). Forthcoming.
Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence by James Bridle (review). JMMLA (Spring 2025). Forthcoming.
“Sound and Form: Listening to Affective Forms in the Soundscapes of Tanya Tagaq’s Split Tooth.” Transmotion 10, no. 1 (Spring 2024).
“Revisioning Victorian(ist) Listening: Rereading Elizabeth Gaskell’s Canadian Landscapes through Inuk Sound.” Victorian Studies 66, no. 3 (Spring 2024): 432-440. doi: 10.2979/vic.00160.
With Sarah Allen and Tracy Cissell. “Ecologies of Collaborative Selves in the Writing Classroom.” Double Helix 11 (2023). doi: 10.37514/DBH-J.2023.11.1.01.
“Oral Storytelling as a Transnational Aesthetic in the Industrial Novel.” The Routledge Companion to Literature and Class. London: Routledge, 2021.
Hope at Sea: Possible Ecologies in Oceanic Literature by Teresa Shewry (review). The Contemporary Pacific 31, no. 2 (2019): 583-586. doi: 10.1353/cp.2019.0040.
PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP
Curator and editor, with Lanialoha Lee. Chicago’s Legacy Hula: An Interactive Digital Exhibit of the Choreography of Kumu Bill Ka‘ulu Charman. The Aloha Center at the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian, Chicago, IL. Forthcoming.
“Hawai‘i in Champaign: An Interview with Lanialoha Lee.” Smile Politely, 2 Nov. 2023. https://www.smilepolitely.com/culture/hawaii-in-champaign-an-interview-with-lanialoha-lee/
INVITED TALKS
Invited Speaker. “Chicago’s Legacy Hula” Exhibit, 2nd Anniversary Celebration, Field Museum, Chicago, IL. 24 May 2025. *Cancelled due to travel restrictions.
Guest Lecturer, “INFO/WRIT 303: Writing across Media,” taught by Jamie Keener, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 19 Oct. 2023.
“Mobility as Foundation: Boarding Schools and Indigenous Movement as Resistance.” Native American Feast Day, Danville Correctional Center, 25 Sept. 2023.
“Ungrading and Peer Review.” Business and Technical Writing Training, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Fall 2023.
“Storytelling as Ceremony.” Native Summer Solstice Ceremony, Danville Correctional Center, 21 June 2023.
Guest Lecturer, “Hawaiian History,” taught by Vincent Lankewish, Manhattan Professional Performing Arts School, 19 Dec. 2022.
CONFERENCE PAPERS
“Woven Oralities: Grounding Pacific Islander Storytelling in Material Practice.” American Studies Association Annual Meeting, 14-17 Nov. 2024, Baltimore, MD.
Roundtable: “Epistemic Carcerality: Exploring the Intersections of Epistemic Injustice and the Carceral State.” American Society of Criminology’s Annual Meeting, 13-16 Nov. 2024, San Francisco, CA. Accepted roundtable presentation.
“Unsettling Forms: Weaving a Literary Lei of Resistance in Nineteenth Century Hawai‘i” (Re-storying the “American West”: Trans-Indigenous Methods and Textualities panel). Western American Literatures Conference, 2-5 Oct. 2024, Tuscon, AZ. Accepted panel.
“‘You hear me?’”: An Indigenous Sound Studies Approach to Reading the Multiform Novel.” D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies (NCAIS) Graduate Student Conference, 10 February 2024, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL.
“Revisioning Victorian(ist) Listening: Rereading Elizabeth Gaskell’s Canadian Landscapes through Inuk Sound.” North American Studies Association 2023 Conference, Revision, Return, Reform, 9-11 Nov. 2023, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.
“Storied Lands of Promise: Public Lectures and Australia’s Wakefieldism.” North American Studies Association 2022 Conference, Just Victorians, 29 Sept. – 2 Oct. 2022, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA.
“A System of Truth and Lies in Gould’s Book of Fish or, Embedded Adaptations in a Mysterious World.” Once and Future Fantasies, 13-17 July 2022, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom.
“Unsettling Forms: Weaving a Literary Lei of Resistance in Nineteenth Century Hawai’i” (Exotic Blossoms of Song”: Reorganizing Colonized Worlds through Hybrid Forms panel chaired by Meredith Martin, Princeton). North American Victorian Studies Association 2020 Conference, Unsettling Victorians, 3-5 March 2022, Virtual.
“A System of Truth and Lies in Gould’s Book of Fish or, Embedded Adaptations in a Mysterious World.” International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, 18-21 March 2020, Orlando Marriott Airport Lakeside, Orlando, FL. Accepted Conference Presentation. *Cancelled due to Covid-19.
“Returning Home: Oral Storytelling as a Transnational Aesthetic in the Industrial Novel.” The Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States 2019 Conference, Victorian Stakes and Stakeholders, 7-10 November 2019, Courtyard by Marriott Seattle Downtown/Pioneer Square, Seattle, WA.
“Habit, Self-Efficacy, and Collaboration beyond the Classroom.” Council of Writing Program Administrators 2019 Conference, More Seats at the Table: Radical Inclusion in Writing Programs, 21-28 July 2019, Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel, Baltimore, MD.
Joint presentation with Sarah Allen, Kelly McDermott, and Tani Loo. “Making the Self at Home: Guided Self-Efficacy toward Community Engagement in Mentored First-Year Writing Classrooms.” 3rd Annual UH System First-Year Writing Symposium, 2 March 2019, Hawai‘i Convention Center, Honolulu, HI.
“Spirit Wisdom: Disrupting the Discourse of Difference in Haggard’s When the World Shook.” International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, 13-16 March 2019, Orlando Marriott Airport Lakeside, Orlando, FL.
“Strange New Worlds: Science Fiction, Empire, and Mythologies of Extinction and Survival.” Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene International Conference, 3-5 October 2018, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic.
Joint presentation with Sarah Allen, Matt Ito, and Jordan Luz. “Mentoring First Year Writers: Supporting the Development of the Student Writer.” 2nd Annual UH System First-Year Writing Symposium, 7 April 2018, University of Hawai’i—West O’ahu, Kapolei, HI.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
EDUCATION JUSTICE PROJECT @ Danville Correctional Center
Spring 2024
AIS 459: Topic in American Indian Literature (Indigenous Transnational Feminisms)
Spring 2023
GWS305: Theories of Race, Gender, and Sexuality (Developing Your Intellectual Genealogy)
COURSES TAUGHT
Spring 2025
AIS 101: Intro to American Indian Studies (TA for Deena Rymhs)
Spring 2023
RHET 233: Advanced Rhetoric and Composition (Developing Your Intellectual Genealogy)
Fall 2022
ENGL 115: Intro to British Literature (Around the World in 80 Days through Multimodal Mapping)
Spring 2022
ENGL 208: Victorian Literature and Culture (Aesthetics and Politics in the Long Nineteenth Century)
BTW 250: Principles of Business Communication
Fall 2021
ENGL 103: Intro to Fiction (The Novel and Its Adaptations)
BTW 250: Principles of Business Communication
Academic Year 2020-2021
RHET 105: Writing and Research (First-Year Composition)
STUDENT MENTORING
Primary Advisor, William Pierce, Undergraduate, B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies, Education Justice Project
Mentor/Internship Supervisor, Lukas Angelus, Undergraduate, B.A. in English, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
One-on-One Writing Mentor, Students enrolled in English 100: Composition I, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, August 2017 – May 2019
ADDITIONAL PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Program Administrator, High School Pilot Program (IL Public Act 102-0966 / HB5016), Education Justice Project, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL, May 2024 – Present
Managing Editor, American Literary History (ALH), University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL, Fall 2022 – Present
‘Iolani Schools, Summer School Teacher, 6th-8th grade, Honolulu, HI, Summer 2019
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Mentor/TA for English 100: Composition I, Honolulu, HI, August 2017 – May 2019
University of Maryland Writing Internship, Teaching Assistant for English 101: Academic Writing, College Park, MD, January 2015 – May 2015
Editor, Life Before Last by Martha Bianchi Dickinson, Emily Dickinson’s niece, Accepted for academic publication, Supervisor: Martha Nell Smith, University of Maryland, College Park
HONORS & AWARDS
UIUC Graduate College Dissertation Completion Fellowship AY2024-2025
2023 NCAIS Graduate Summer Institute Fellow, Newberry Library, Chicago
Schurman Brookens Graduate Award for demonstrated excellence in teaching first year writing
Semi-finalist, Fulbright U.S. Student Program, New Zealand
LAS and Decyk Summer Research Scholarship 2022
“The Chow that Cannot Be Spoken: Relationality and Estrangement in the Animal Gaze of the Michael Fields’ Whym Chow.” 2021 Wallace Stevens Memorial Prize, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign English Department.
Roxanne J. Decyk Fellowship for women studying British literature (UIUC English Department)
LLL Special Fund for Graduate Students Travel Award
McCutcheon Endowed Scholarship 2017
English Department Achievement Scholarship Fall 2017–Spring 2018, Spring 2019
University of Maryland English Honors Program
Contributor, Alternative Grading in the Business Writing Classroom Faculty Retreat Grant, Program in Professional Writing, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2022-2023.
ACADEMIC SERVICE
Lead Organizer, Interlocutions in American Literary History: Towbridge Symposium, 1 Mar. 2024, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Lead Organizer, Unpublished America: Towbridge Symposium, 16 Sept. 2022, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
US Graduate Representative, NAVSA (North American Victorian Studies Association), February 2022 – Present
Colloquia Committee Member, EGSA, English Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, English Department, January – December 2020
Organizing Committee Member, Chaminade University, Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) ’19 Annual Conference, August 2018–June 2019
MA Representative, Policy Committee, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa English Department, August 2017–May 2019
MA Representative, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, English Department Policy Committee, Fall 2017
Volunteer, Georgetown University, Northeast Victorian Studies Association (NVSA) Annual Conference, April 2017
Coordinator, Sigma Tau Delta/UMD English Department Career Event, May 6, 2016
President, Sigma Tau Delta, University of Maryland Chapter, 2015-2016 Academic Year
Vice-President, Sigma Tau Delta, University of Maryland Chapter, 2015 Spring Semester
Erin Cheslow 