Who I am:

I am a Professor of both Media and Cultural Studies and of English at the University of California, Riverside. My research focuses on speculative fiction (sf). I’m particularly interested in the way sf functions as an important mode for the critical analysis of the present. My most recent books are Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First Century Speculative Fiction, which is about ways that sf can help illuminate the political stakes in biotechnologies, and (co-authored with Jonathan Alexander) Programming the Future, which is about how sf television asks us to think about the future of governance. I’ve also just edited two books, The Cambridge Companion to American Utopian Literature and Culture since 1945, and The New Routledge Companion to Science Fiction (with Mark Bould and Andrew M. Butler).

My Fulbright grant focuses on:

My Fulbright grant will enable me to be part of the Speculative Texts and Media research group at the University of Warsaw, where I will continue my current research project on economics and speculative fiction. I’ll be able to offer a course each semester to American Studies graduate students, which will focus on ways that sf texts offer us critical perspectives on urgent topic in contemporary American life. I also hope to organize public-facing discussion panels, symposia, and similar events that will enable wider public engagement with these topics beyond the university.

I decided to apply for a Fulbright grant because:

I decided to apply for a Fulbright grant because I believe that it is important to engage in research collaboration across scholarly disciplines and across national research communities. I am excited for the chance to engage with European-based scholars and students and explore new frameworks and research questions that emerge distinctly in different places due to contingent histories. The questions that scholarship in sf studies focuses on have transnational stakes–issues such as climate change, structure of global governance, the impact on the future of work of technologies such as AI. I wanted to be based in Poland because of the country’s location in central Europe and the country’s centrality to the political and economic structures that shape our experience of the world following the second-world war. We are in another period of political and cultural restructuring, and I look forward to engaging with the perspectives and priorities that address this moment from this central European framework.

After completing my Fulbright grant I would like to:

After completing my Fulbright grant, I would like to work at my home institution to facilitate more opportunities for our students to experience study-abroad through the program. I have hosted many Fulbright scholars from multiple countries in the US, and their presence in my classrooms has always enriched the conservation and offered my US-based students a wider frame of reference. I want to help find ways to enhance this cross-cultural dialogue by creating programs through which my home institution’s students would also have the experience of studying abroad and learning about other cultural perspectives through immersion.