UMass Boston

Science fiction; Postwar and 21st century British literature; Anglophone postcolonial literatures; critical theory

PhD, Michigan State University

• “Tade Thompson, Wormwood Trilogy (2016-2019) / Africanfuturism’s Salvage Utopianism.” Uneven Futures, edited by Gerry Canavan, Sean Guynes, and Ida Yoshinaga, MIT Press, 2022, pp. 47-56.
• “The (Infra)Structural Limits and Utopian Horizons of Lagos_2060’s Africanfuturism,” Geographies of African Futures, special issue of Literary Geographies, edited by Matthew Eatough and Irikidzayi Manase, vol. 8, no. 2, 2022, pp. 119-38. 
• “Cyberpunk.” The Encyclopedia of American Fiction 1980-2020, edited by Patrick O’Donnell, Stephen J. Burn, and Lesley Larkin, Blackwell Press, 2022.
• Editorial Preface. “There is No Alternative: Non-Reading Suvin, Anti-Antiutopianism, Science Fiction, and Communism,” in Darko Suvin, Disputing the Deluge: Collected 21st Century Writings on Utopia, Narration, and Survival, edited by Hugh C. O’Connell. Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2021, pp. 1-12.
• “‘Everything is changed by virtue of being lost’: African Futurism Between Globalization and the Anthropocene in Tade Thompson’s Rosewater,” Beyond Afrofuturism, special issue of Extrapolation, edited by Isiah Lavender III and Lisa Yaszek, vol. 61, no. 1-2, 2020, pp. 109-30.
• "Blade Runner 2049"s Incongruous Couplings: Living and Dying in the Anthropocene” (co-authored with Sarah Hamblin). Legacies of Blade Runner, special Issue of Science Fiction Film and Television, edited by Sarah Hamblin and Hugh C. O’Connell. 13.1 (2020): 37-58.
• “Legacies of Blade Runner Introduction” (co-authored with Sarah Hamblin). Legacies of Blade Runner, special Issue of Science Fiction Film and Television, edited by Sarah Hamblin and Hugh C. O’Connell. 13.1 (2020): 1-14.
• “Marxism and Cyberpunk.” The Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture, edited by Anna McFarlane, Graham J. Murphy, and Lars Schmeink, Routledge Press, 2020, 282-90.
• “Globalization in David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten: Navigating the ‘Reality Gap.’” David Mitchell: Contemporary Critical Perspectives, edited by Wendy Knepper and Courtney Hopf, Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2019, pp. 23-38.
• “The Novums of Fiscalmancy: Speculative Finance and Speculative Fiction in Ian McDonald’s The Dervish House,” Speculative Finance/Speculative Fiction, special issue of CR: The New Centennial Review, edited by David M. Higgins and Hugh C. O’Connell, vol. 19, no. 1, 2019, pp. 129-54.
• “Introduction: Speculative Finance/Speculative Fiction” co-authored with David M. Higgins, Speculative Finance/Speculative Fiction, special issue of CR: The New Centennial Review, edited by David M. Higgins and Hugh C. O’Connell, vol. 19, no. 1, 2019, pp. 1-10.
• “‘Can we imagine a world without funds or Banks?’ Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako as African-Utopian Speculative Fiction,” Articulating Race and Utopia, special issue of Utopian Studies, edited by Edward Chan and Patricia Ventura, vol. 30, no. 1, 2019, pp. 67-86.
• “Science Fiction and the Global South.” Cambridge History of Science Fiction, edited by Gerry Canavan and Eric Link. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Forthcoming Spring 2018.
• “‘We are Change’ The Novum as Event in Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon.” The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 3.3 (2016): 291-313.
• “Engines of Utopia; Or, the Economic Image-Function of the Train in Christopher Priest’s Inverted World, Ian McDonald’s Ares Express and China Miéville’s Iron Council” Paradoxa 27 (2015): 8-21.
• “(Re)Turning Money into Rebellion: Reification and Utopianism in Early Punk Production.” The Journal of Popular Culture 47.3 (2014): 591-612.
• “The British SF Boom: Tracking the Currents of the Future between Postimperialism, Postnationalism and Globalization.” CR: The New Centennial Review Special Issue: The British SF Boom 13.2 (2013): 1-12.
• “The Boom’s Near-Future: Postnational Ill-Fantasy, or Literature Under the Sign of Crisis.” CR: The New Centennial Review Special Issue: The British SF Boom 13.2 (2013): 67-100.
• “Mutating Towards the Future: The Convergence of Utopianism, Postcolonial SF and the Postcontemporary Longing for Form in Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome.” Modern Fiction Studies 58.4 (2012): 773-795. (SFRA Pioneer Award Honorable Mention 2013)
• “A Weak Utopianism of Postcolonial Nationalist Bildung: Re-reading Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born.” The Journal of Postcolonial Writing 48.4 (2012): 371-83.

Book Reviews and Encyclopedia Entries

• “On Humanist Handmaidens and Posthumanist Possibilities,” A Review of Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First Century Speculative Fiction by Sherryl Vint, Science Fiction Studies vol. 49, no. 3, 2022, pp. 598-602.
• “A Revolutionary Hate to Salvage Utopian Love: On China Miéville’s A Spectre, Haunting.” The Los Angeles Review of Books. Feb. 18, 2023. Available online. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-revolutionary-hate-to-salvage-utopian-love-on-china-mievilles-a-spectre-haunting/
• “Banking on the Future: Ian McDonald’s Luna: Moon Rising.” The Los Angeles Review of Books. Sept. 16, 2019. Available online. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/banking-on-the-future-ian-mcdonalds-luna-moon-rising/
• “The Earth Strikes Back! Post-Thatcherite Neoliberalism in Ian McDonald’s Luna: Wolf Moon.” The Los Angeles Review of Books. June 9, 2018. Available online. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-earth-strikes-%20%20back-post-thatcherite-neoliberalism-in-ian-mcdonalds-luna-wolf-moon/
• “‘Erring on the Side of Democracy’ Nations, Modernities and Disputations” A Review of Partha Chatterjee’s Empire and Nation in Reviews in Cultural Theory 2.1 (2012).
• “The Moon is an Even Harsher CEO.” The Los Angeles Review of Books. July 7, 2016. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/moon-even-harsher-ceo/#.
• “Destroying Utopia to Preserve utopianism: Tom Moylan’s Critically Utopian Dialectics.” A Review of Tom Moylan’s Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination.  Extrapolation 58.2-3 (2018): 306-11.

Edited Books & Special Issues

• Disputing the Deluge: Collected 21st Century Writings on Utopia, Narration, and Survival by Darko Suvin, edited by Hugh C. O’Connell. Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2021.
• Legacies of Blade Runner, Guest-Editor with Sarah Hamblin, Legacies of Blade Runner, special issue of Science Fiction Film and Television, vol. 13, no. 1, (2020).
• Speculative Finance/Speculative Fiction, Guest-Editor with David M. Higgins, a special issue of CR: The New Centennial Review, Vol. 19, no. 1 (2019).
• The British SF Boom, Guest-Editor, a Special Issue of CR: The New Centennial Review, Vol. 13, no. 2 (2013).

Courses Taught

• ENGL 200: Understanding Literature
• ENGL 273G: The Art of Fiction
• ENGL 337: The Short Novel: Empire’s Aftermath
• Honors 101: Understanding  Global Culture: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
• ENGL 334: Science Fiction: Genre, Tradition, and Global Reboot
• ENGL 646: Literature & Society: Postcolonial and Postimperial Science Fictions

Current Projects

I’m currently working on a couple of projects that interrogate the intersections between Speculative Finance and Speculative Fiction, including working on a book manuscript and guest-editing with David Higgins a forthcoming issue of CR: The New Centennial Review that includes twelve essays exploring different facets of this relationship.