Painted Bunting, Inks Lake State Park, Burnet County, Texas, 2025
Presented at PAMLA, San Francisco, California, November 21, 2025
I presented “The Goblin El Dorado: California and the Gothic Subversion of US Expansion” at the Pacific Ancient and Modern Languages Association conference in San Francisco. For much of the early nineteenth century, California figured as a distant and mysterious land in the American imagination. Pro-expansionists imagined California as a region flushed with bounty awaiting the adventurous enterprise. For gothic storytellers and poets, however, California represented the nightmare that culminated atter decades of warning their fellow citizens about the corrosive avarice that underly US territorial acquisition. I talked about the 1830s reemergence of the El Dorado legend that described the chimera of westward ambitions and show that concerned observers like Methodist minister Daniel P. Kidder recognized the darkness hidden beneath the glitter of this myth. Atter the 1846-1847 tragedy of the Donner Party in the Sierra Nevada, contributors to the California Star exaggerated stories of cannibalism as an example of the downfall of those who risked too recklessly to quench their rank greed. I concluded with an examination of how poets—including Edgar Alan Poe—reacted to the perceived breakdown of morality in the California placers during the early months of the Gold Rush. They depicted California as a fiendish goblin who lured greedy men to meaningless deaths. Big thanks to the panelists, moderators, and audience members who gathered for a productive conversation. The research is part of my book manuscript This Empire Grim..
Presented at WLA, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, September 22, 2025
I presented “The Uncanny Expanse: The Dark Sublime of the Great Plains as Ecogothic Defiance of US Expansion” at the 2025 conference of the Western Literature Association at Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. With the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, the United States acquired a vast and alien territory that required reinterpretation. The Great Plains already contained generations-old narratives conveyed in Indigenous traditions, but US cultural leaders sought to reinscribe the land to determine how it fit within—or without—their national domain. Two prevailing visions emerged--the pessimistic Great American Desert and the romantic Great American Prairie. However, a third—darker mood—lurked as the imperial gaze shifted from the eastern woodlands toward the interior grasslands. A dark sublime that awakened new fears and intensified old anxieties took on different guises, but I focused on the literary accounts of prairie fires. I talked about authors from the canonical—James Fenimore Cooper, George Catlin—to the more obscure—John A. Clark, Lewis Ringe. The research is part of my book manuscript This Empire Grim. This year's conference was particularly fruitful with numerous panels dedicated to the gothic in western literature. During the trip, I took the opportunity to visit the Washita Battlefield National Historic Site. While there, I could not help but hear the words of Lewis Ringe's "Western Plains" (1838) that equated US expansion to a destroying prairie fire.
Presented at SHEAR, Providence, Rhode Island, July 20, 2025
I presented “Those Infernal Machines: Steam-Powered Monsters on the Frontiers of Greed” at the 2025 conference of the Society for Historians of the Early Republic at Providence, Rhode Island. The literature of US expansion often portrayed steam power as evidence of American enterprise and prosperity, but a small group of gothic storytellers portrayed it as an anathema to nature and as an avatar of corrosive greed. In the 1830s-1840s, activist poets like Lydia Sigourney and potboiler novelists like Joseph Ingraham depicted rampaging locomotives and hell-bound steamboats as monstrous incarnations of the toxic capitalism and materiality that drove their nation’s territorial ambitions. The research is part of my book manuscript This Empire Grim. Thanks to my co-panelist Leah Begg (University of Connecticut) and our chair and commentator Erin Dwyer (Oakland University) for the warm conversation and generous insight, and a big thanks to the handful of attendees how came out to the last session of the conference with great questions about our work.
Research in Connecticut, July 15-17, 2025
Noyes Memorial Building (1901), Litchfield, CT. 2025.
Thanks to the Dr. Ralph and Edna Wooster Professorship, I enjoyed the opportunity to research at the Litchfield Historical Society and the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History (CMCH) before I headed over to Providence, Rhode Island, for the SHEAR conference. On July 15 at Litchfield, I examined the correspondence of Payne Kenyon Kilbourne (1815-1859). He wrote the twenty-two-stanza epic poem The Iron Steed (1843) that expressed his uncertainties about the new technology of steam locomotion in the wake of the Panic of 1837. Thank you to Evan McDonagh and Sean Kunic for coordinating my visit. On July 16-18, I worked at the CMCH on their extensive collection of Lydia Huntley Sigourney (1791-1865) papers. The Hartford writer and editor was one of the most famous poets in the early nineteenth-century United States, and she was a leading advocate for a variety of reform movements, including protesting US efforts at removing Native Americans from their lands and advocating environmental issues. Sigourney figures prominently in my current book project This Empire Grim. The Sigourney collections are rich in correspondence with other authors I write about in the book manuscript, letters from Native American leaders sharing their concerns about US removal, and insights into the literary work of the era. I read in person a letter from Edgar Alan Poe and a surprise note from Sam Houston written in 1853 as a senator from Texas. Thanks to Sierra Dixon, Chianna Calafiore, and the entire staff at CMCH for making my visit a productive one.
Presented at the Inaugural Alliance for Texas History Conference, May 15, 2025
I presented a paper at the inaugural conference of the Alliance for Texas History (ATxH) at San Marcos. I continue to refine my understanding of the gothic critique of US expansion with “The Incrustation of Habit: Charles Wilkins Webber and the Monstrous Texan.” Big thanks to my fellow panelists Sarah K Rodriguez, Patrick Troester, and David Morales, and special shout out to Gary Pinkerton and everyone involved in making this important meeting a success.
Fourth Annual Greater Gulf Symposium, March 31, 2025
The 2025 Greater Gulf Symposium tours the Texas Coffee Company
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As director of the Center for History and Culture, I enjoyed a busy, productive, and fun two days hosting the 2025 Greater Gulf Symposium (GGS) with the theme of food culture. Symposium Chair Carrie Helms Tippen (Chatham University) led a group of four scholars: Annemarie Anderson (Southern Foodways), Randy Gonzales (UL Lafayette), Todd Romero (Houston), and Ian Seavey (UT Rio Grande Valley). Other participants included Jeff Forret (Center assistant director) and graduate student Maria Borsuk (Pope John Paul II Catholic University, Lublin, Poland). On Monday (March 31), the Symposium toured the Texas Coffee Company which opened in 1921, producing several blends of Seaport brand of coffees, TexJoy steak seasoning, and many other products. After lunch at the local favorite Richard's Cafe, the GGS toured the McFaddin-Ward House Museum, and that evening, we enjoyed dinner and poetry reading with Lamar University students and Symposium Fellow Randy Gonzales. On Tuesday (April 1), the GGS workshopped four essays during morning and afternoon sessions. The group enjoyed a lunch catered by nationally renowned Patillo's BBQ (1912) at the Spindletop Boomtown Museum. That evening, the Center hosted a public reception, poster session, a keynote talk, and book signing with Carrie Helms Tippen.
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