Fictions of America
I compiled this anthology of American literature with Ulrich Baer, University Professor of Comparative Literature at NYU. Fictions of America: The Book of Firsts (Warbler Press, 2020) brings together a series of “firsts” in American literary history. It uses “primacy” as a heuristic to shine light on a much more diverse tradition than the one customarily taught in many U.S. high school and college classrooms. By approaching American literature through a number of “firsts”—e.g. the first American queer novel, the first play by an Asian American author, etc.—the anthology provides a teachable resource for the humanities curriculum that centers the many BIPOC and queer contributions to this country’s literary past.
Public Writing
2024. “Commencement Speech: Queer People Experience Time Differently.” Mosaic (New Jersey Star-Ledger).
2024. “Land Back and Time Back!: A Conversation on 'Time’.” Palaver: A Journal of Ideas. (with Kyle A. Castillo)
2023. “Banned Books Week.” The Stute: The Independent Student Newspaper of Stevens Institute of Technology.
2022. “From Pride March to Museum Exhibit.” Museum of the City of New York Blog.
2020. “No Exit: International Students and the Pandemic.” Los Angeles Review of Books.
2016. “Ausländerbehörde.” HYSTERIA. (poem)
2016. “Life Writing – Writing Lives. Engaging Knowledge, Time and Self.” H-Soz-Kult. (with Heike Liebau)
2015. “Concretising the Terms of Debate: Islam and Secularism in the German Press.” Orient Bulletin.
2015. “Erinnerungsorte der asiatischen Diaspora.” Erinnerungsorte in Berlin zu vergessenen Geschichten. Special issue of Lernen aus der Geschichte. (with Noa Ha)
2014. “‘Don’t Be Evil.’ Model Minorities in Colourblind ‘Schland.” Asian Germany. Spec. issue of Heimatkunde.
Scholarly Writing
2022. “Afterword: Anthropology and Science Fiction.” The Ordinariness of Cross-Time Relations. Special issue of Anthropology and Humanism.
2021. “Octavia Butler and the Settler Colonial Speculative: Xenogenesis and Planetary Loss.” Our Shared Planet. Special issue of American Studies.
2017. “Meine Freiheit, die es so noch nicht gibt: Alexander Weheliye’s Habeas Viscus.” Interventions.
2016. “Cityzenship: Rightful Presence and the Urban Commons.” Affective Citizenship. Special issue of Citizenship Studies. (with Wanda Vrasti)
Book Reviews
2024. “A Usable Queer Past.” Review of Queer Forms, by Ramzi Fawaz. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies.
2022. Review of Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds, by Jayna Brown. The Black Scholar.
2021. Review of A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler, by Lynell George. Harvard Review.
2020. “Utopia in Black.” Review of Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism, by Alex Zamalin. Social Text.
2020. Review of Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction, by Sami Schalk. Journal of Postcolonial Writing.
2019. “Participatory Colonialism.” Review of Prairie Rising: Indigenous Youth, Decolonization, and the Politics of Intervention, by Jaskiran Dhillon. Critical Ethnic Studies.
Translations
2022 [2020]. Che Gossett. “Abolitionistische Alternativen: Schwarzer Radikalismus und die Verweigerung von Reform.” In Abolitionismus: Ein Reader. Eds. Daniel Loick and Vanessa E. Thompson. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
2021 [1930]. M.P.T. Acharya. “Militarism in Asia: The Obligations of European Workers.” In Barricade: A Journal of Translation and Anti-Fascism.
2018 [2013]. Zülfukar Çetin. “The Dynamics of Queer Politics and Gentrification in Berlin.” In The Queer Intersectional in Contemporary Germany: Essays on Racism, Capitalism and Sexual Politics. Ed. Christopher Sweetapple.