Ph.D., Stanford University (Comparative Literature), 2004

M.A., Queen’s University, Belfast (Irish Writing), 1997

B.A., Princeton University (Comparative Literature), 1995

Curriculum Vitae

I am currently Associate Professor (maître de conférences) at the University of Tours, France, working across the areas of theatre and performance studies, English and Comparative Literature. In 2016, I was Invited Professor at the University of Paris, X, and from 2006 - 2016, was lecturer (associate professor) in English and Comparative Literature at the University of Aberdeen, affiliated with the Departments of Music and Film and Visual Culture, and coordinator of the Literature in a World Context programme (http://www.abdn.ac.uk/sll/disciplines/lwc/). Prior to this, I held post-doctoral positions in the French and Humanities departments at Stanford University and at the Institute of Irish Studies at Queens University, Belfast. 

I specialize in transnational literature and audio-visual culture in the modern and contemporary period (roughly 1848 through 1968), with a particular focus on the role of listening and non-discursive sound (music, noise, murmurs and laughter) across literature and the arts of performance. My research interests thus lie at the interstices of Modernist and Irish Studies, Performance Studies, Sound Studies and Visual Culture, and involve frequent forays into continental philosophy and critical theory. I have written on laughter, murmurs and music in the works of Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett, on the turn towards listening in continental philosophy from Heidegger through Jean-Luc Nancy and Peter Sloterdijk, on the resonance of the image in contemporary philosophy, visual art and science, on rhythm and resonance in modern and contemporary poetry, and on contemporary installation, video and performance art.