My research examines literary and visual cultures
of evolution and de-extinction.
Species Loss and Revival in a Biotechnological Age
In an age of biotechnological innovation, what do literary and visual cultures of de-extinction reveal about how we imagine past, present, and future ecological crises? Defining the emerging field of De-Extinction Studies, this project analyzes how speculative artists, authors, and scientists are creating the cultural space required to explore bioethical questions that lie at the heart of species revivalist programmes in the present era.
Image: Raul Martin
Dead Darwin:
Necro-Ecologies in Neo-Victorian Culture
*Book monograph forthcoming with Manchester University Press’s Interventions: Rethinking the Nineteenth Century Series. https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/series/interventions-rethinking-the-nineteenth-century/
Charles Darwin's natural scientific oeuvre can be interpreted as a meditation on decompositional processes. Focusing on worms, molluscs, corals, fish, and fungi, "Dead Darwin" analyses the evolutionary aesthetics of decomposition in contemporary fiction, film, art, and poetics. In this project, death and decay become a creative threshold for evolutionary progress, inciting a renewed critique of the principles of life, matter, and being in Darwin's evolutionary theory.
Image: Stephen Collis and Jordan Scott, decomp