Appearances

Upcoming Appearances

I won’t be presenting, but I will be attending MLA in San Francisco on January 6, 2023 to attend the panels sponsored by the Mark Twain Circle. Come say hello!

Previous Appearances

September 5, 2021 – Big River Steampunk Festival in Hannibal, MO. Presenting “Mark Twain and the Origins of Steampunk” at the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum at 1pm.

January 25, 2020 – Modern Language Association in Seattle. Presented on the Mark Twain Circle’s “Mark Twain and Globalism” panel.

May 25, 2019 – ConQuesT, Kansas City, MO.  I did a fiction reading, and appeared on panels about American Gods and Doctor Who’s 13th season.

August 16-20, 2018 – Worldcon 76, the World Science Fiction Convention, in San Jose, CA.  I was the Academic-Track Programming Lead, so I moderated many academic panels. I also proposed and moderated a panel called “Un-pulping the Pulp Heroes,” with a killer line-up that included Sheila Williams, Cat Rambo, Ira Nayman, Sean Grigsby, and William Wu.

May 26, 2018 – American Literature Association conference in San Francisco. Presented paper “Old Sleuths: Portraying Age in Detective Serials, 1870-1910” on the “Illustrating Crime Fiction” panel, and was a panelist at the “Above the American Renaissance” roundtable.

March 22, 2018 – C19 Conference in Albuquerque, presenting “In Nemo’s Footsteps: U.S. Responses to Verne’s Oceanic Internationalism.” The panel was called “Surplus, Circulation, and the Public Sphere in Nineteenth-Century Popular Culture.”

October 11, 2017 – “Trouble Begins at 8” lecture at Elmira College.

June 30, 2017 – Science Fiction Research Association annual conference at University of California, Riverside.  Our panel on “Recovering 19th-Century American SF” featured Alfred Bendixen and Sabrina Starnaman.

June 17-18,  2017 –  The Campbell Conference at the University of Kansas.  I won’t be at the Campbell/Sturgeon Awards the night before, but I’ll be participating all day Saturday and Sunday as the Center for the Study of Science Fiction honors founder James Gunn.

August 18-21, 2016 – MidAmeriCon II, the 74th World Science Fiction  Convention, in Kansas City, as committee member on the Academic-Track Programming Committee and panelist or moderator on many events.

May 26, 2016 – American Literature Association Conference in San Francisco, CA, on a panel I helped put together on  “American Science Fiction: Utopian Technologies and Feminist Spaces”  with Bridgette Barclay, Jana Tigchelaar, and Michelle Yates. My paper was called “Technocracy and Gender in Albert Bigelow Paine and Anna Adolph’s Polar Utopian Novels.”

February 26-28, 2015 – American Literature Association’s Symposium on “God and the American Writer,” San Antonio, TX, delivering a paper called “Boy Inventors and Jewish Giants: Biblical Legends in Nineteenth-Century Technocratic Dime Novels.”

May 23, 2014 – American Literature Association, Washington, DC, as respondent and chair of panel “William Faulkner and Mark Twain,” organized by the William Faulkner Society and the Mark Twain Circle.

August 29 – September 2, 2013 – LoneStarCon 3 (The 71st World SF Convention) in San Antonio, TX. Panels and presentations listed below (updated 9/5/13 to reflect actual panels):

• “Fans and Academia” (with Lynne M. Thomas and John Kessel)
• “James Gunn Tribute” (with Kij Johnson,  John Kessel, Gary K. Wolfe, Michael Page, Chris McKitterick)
• “Fantastic Victoriana: The True Roots of Steampunk” (with Jess Nevins, Dave Boop, and Drew Hayden)
• “AboutSF’s Teaching SF: A Workshop for Teachers, Librarians, and Parents.”  I led a workshop on science and technical writing.

May 28-June 1, 2013 – The ASLE (Association for Study of Literature and the Environment) Conference at the University of Kansas, presenting on Mark Twain, Kij Johnson and Bradley Denton at the panel “Missing Links, Mutant Bunnies, and Militant Labradoodles: Connecting Human and Animal through Speculative Fiction.”

May 25-26, 2013 -ConQuesT, Kansas City Science Fiction Convention on panels for Hadley Rille Books and AboutSF, plus a fiction reading on Sunday the 26th.

April 11-14, 2013 – The Eaton Science Fiction Conference, UC Riverside, delivering the paper “Buddy Holly as Science-Fiction Metaphor” and moderating a special panel on James E. Gunn’s career.