CV

Last Updated: November 22, 2023

1. Personal Information.

Contact Information

University of Maryland, College Park

Department of English

3241 Tawes Hall

College Park, MD 20742

Email. lkonstan@umd.edu

Employment

Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Maryland, College Park, 2017–Present.

Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Maryland, College Park, 2012–2017.

ACLS New Faculty Fellow, Department of English, Princeton University, 2011–2012.

Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, Program in Writing and Rhetoric, Stanford University, 2009–2011.

Education

Ph.D., English, Stanford University, 2002–2009.

M.A., English, Stanford University, 2002-2008.

B.A., English, Psychology, and College Scholar, Cornell University, 1996-2000.

2. Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activities.

Books

Books Authored

The Last Samurai Reread. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022.

• Excerpts published in Bookforum and Public Books.
• Reviewed by Publishers Weekly; Times Literary Supplement; Talking Big; The Complete Review; London Review of Books.

Cool Characters: Irony and American Fiction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. 384 pp.

• Excerpt published in Salon, March 27, 2016.
• Featured in “23 Books to be excited for in March.” Literary Hub, February 25, 2016
• Reviewed by Dissent (Summer 2016); Los Angeles Review of Books (August 15, 2016); The Point; Politics/Letters (June 27, 2016); PopMatters; Stanford (May/June 2016); Times Higher Education; TLS; 49th Parallel, No. 39; American Literature 89.3 (2017); ALH Online Review, Series X;Politics/Letters (August 28, 2017); European Journal of American Culture 36, No. 2 (June 2017); American Studies 56, No. 3/4 (2018); ASAP/Journal (June 2018).

Pop Apocalypse: A Possible Satire. A novel. New York: Ecco/Harper Perennial, 2009. 292 pp.

• Reviewed in AM New York; A.V. Club; Booklist; Bookforum; Bookslut; The Daily Evergreen; io9; The L Magazine; Los Angeles Times; Midwest Book Review; Pop Damage; Publishers Weekly; Sacramento Book Review; San Francisco Chronicle.

Book and Journals Edited

Artful Breakdowns: The Comics of Art Spiegelman. Co-edited with Georgiana Banita. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2023. 322 pp. Edited collection.

“Publishing American Literature, 1945–2020.” American Literary History 33, no. 2. 2021. Co-edited with Dan Sinykin. Special issue.

“The 7 Neoliberal Arts.” Post45: Contemporaries, August 31, 2020. Essay cluster.

The Legacy of David Foster Wallace. Co-edited with Samuel Cohen. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2012. 244 pp. Edited collection.

• Reviewed in American Book Review; Choice; Fiction Advocate; ForeWord; Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association; Kirkus Reviews; Library Journal; Modern Language Review; Review of Contemporary Fiction; Studies in the Novel; TLS.

Chapters in Books

[“Entrepreneurs in an Expanding Field: On Karen Berger’s ‘Publishing Plan and Editorial Philosophy’ (1991)” In The Comics of Karen Berger. Ed. Colin Beineke and Shawn Patrick Gilmore. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, forthcoming.]

[“‘Boobs + Monsters’: Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Horror Comics, and the Fate of Disciplinary Normalization in the Twenty-First Century.” In Out of the Gutters: Obscenity, Censorship, and Transgression in American Comics. Ed. Patrick Lawrence and Jorge Santos. Austin: University of Texas Press, forthcoming.]

[“The Metamodernist Epiphanies of Daytripper.” After Postmodernism: American Studies in the 21st Century. Ed. Theodora Tsimpouki, Konstantinos Blatanis, and Angeliki Tseti. London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming.]

“Love What You Do: Neoliberalism, Emotional Labor, and the Short Story as a Service.” In Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story. Ed. Gavin Jones and Michael Collins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

“Up from the Underground: Art Spiegelman and the Elevation of Comics.” With Georgiana Banita. In Artful Breakdowns: The Comics of Art Spiegelman. Ed. Georgiana Banita and Lee Konstantinou. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2023. 3–47.

“Art Spiegelman’s Faustian Bargain: TOON Books and the Invention of Comics for Kids.” In Artful Breakdowns: The Comics of Art Spiegelman. Ed. Georgiana Banita and Lee Konstantinou. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2023. 272–289.

“Better Living Through Chemistry: Science Fiction and Consumerism in the Early Cold War.” In The Cambridge History of Science Fiction. Ed. Gerry Canavan and Eric Carl Link. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 247–264.

“Wallace’s ‘Bad’ Influence.” In The Cambridge Companion to David Foster Wallace. Ed. Ralph Clare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 49–65.

“Neorealist Fiction.” In American Literature in Transition: 2000-2010. Ed. Rachel Greenwald Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. 109-124. 109–124.

“Four Faces of Postirony.” In Metamodernism: Historicity, Affect, and Depth after Postmodernism. Ed. Robin van den Akker, Alison Gibbons, and Timotheus Vermeulen. London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017. 87–102.

“Barack Obama’s Postironic Bildungsroman.” In Barack Obama’s Literary Legacy: Readings of Dreams from My Father. Ed. Richard Purcell and Henry Veggian. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016. 119–140.

“The Camelot Presidency: John F. Kennedy and Postwar Style.” In The Cambridge Companion to John F. Kennedy. Ed. Andrew Hoberek. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 149–163.

“Another Novel is Possible: Muckraking in Chris Bachelder’s U.S.! and Robert Newman’s The Fountain at the Center of the World.” In Blast, Corrupt, Dismantle, Erase: Contemporary North American Dystopian Literature. Ed. Brett Josef Grubisic, Gisèle M. Baxter, and Tara Lee. Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2014. 453–473.

“Introduction: Zoologists, Elephants, and Editors.” With Samuel Cohen. In The Legacy of David Foster Wallace. Ed. Samuel Cohen and Lee Konstantinou. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2012. xi-xxv.

“No Bull: David Foster Wallace and Postirony.” In The Legacy of David Foster Wallace. Ed. Samuel Cohen and Lee Konstantinou. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2012. 83-112.

Articles in Journals

“Post-American Speculations.” American Literary History 35, no. 1 (Spring 2023): 290–304. Special issue, “Democracy and the Novel in the US.” Ed. Rachel Greenwald Smith and Gordon Hutner. Invited article.

“Xu Bing’s Big Village: Globalization, White-Collar Work, and the Politics of Emoji,” ASAP/Journal 2, no. 2 (May 2022): 305–330. Special issue, “Inscriptive Studies.” Ed. Paul Benzon and Rita Raley. Invited article.

“Distributed Character,” ASAP/J, September 27, 2021. Cluster on “The Character of Literary Criticism.” Ed. Octavio González and Lisa Mendelman. Invited article.

“Literature and Publishing, 1945-2020.” With Dan Sinykin. American Literary History 33, no. 2 (Summer 2021): 225–243.

“The Cartoonist as Entrepreneur: Rob Liefeld, Image Comics, and the Art of the Creator-Owner,” Post45: Contemporaries, August 31, 2020.

“The 7 Neoliberal Arts, or: Art in the Age of Mass High Culture,” Post45: Contemporaries, August 31, 2020.

“Critique Has Its Uses.” American Book Review 38, no. 5 (July/August 2017): 15-18. Invited article.

“Lewis Hyde’s Double Economy.” ASAP/Journal 1, no. 1 (2016): 123-149. Invited article.

“The World of David Foster Wallace.” boundary 2 40, no. 3 (Fall 2013): 59-86. Invited article.

“The Brand as Cognitive Map in William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition.” boundary 2 36, no. 2 (Summer 2009): 67-97.

Short Fiction

“Hall of Presidents.” Short story. In Post45: Contemporaries, January 16, 2019.

“Burned-over Territory.” Short story. Slate, October 28, 2018.

• Collected in Future Tense Fiction: Stories of Tomorrow (Los Angeles: The Unnamed Press, 2019).

“The Girl Who Almost Became a Zombie.” Short story. In Seat 14C, June 2017.

“Johnny Appledrone vs. the FAA.” Short story. In Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future. Ed. Edward Finn and Kathryn Cramer. New York: HarperCollins, 2014. 182-205.

• Translated into Italian as “La guerra di Johnny Appledrone” in Storie dal domani 2: I migliori racconti Future Fiction 2015.
• Translated into Chinese.

“The Schrödinger Treatment.” Short story. In ReGeneration: Telling Stories from Our Twenties. New York: Tarcher, 2003. 286-99.

Book Reviews and Public Writing

[Review of Mitchum Huehls, Art, Theory, Revolution: The Turn Toward Generality in Contemporary Literature (Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press, 2022). MFS: Modern Fiction Studies. Forthcoming.]

“The Sociology of Literature Comes of Age,” Chronicle of Higher Education, October 23, 2023.

“‘The Last Samurai,’ Unread.” Public Books, November 22, 2022.

• Excerpt of The Last Samurai Reread (New York: Columbia University Press, 2022).

“All These Possibilities!” Bookforum, October 27, 2022.

• Excerpt of The Last Samurai Reread (New York: Columbia University Press, 2022).

“Introduction: Capitalism or Freedom: A Symposium on Martin Hägglund’s ‘This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom.’” Los Angeles Review of Books, July 15, 2020.

“The Noise of Our Names: On Character: Three Inquiries in Literary Studies.” Los Angeles Review of Books, January 13, 2020.

“Something Is Broken in Our Science Fiction.” Slate, January 15, 2019.

• Translated into Chinese.
• Translated into French as “Pourquoi ne parvient-on pas à dépasser le cyberpunk?,” trans. Yann Champion, SlateFR, January 30, 2019.

“Avital Ronell and the End of the Star System.” Chronicle of Higher Education , August 22, 2018.

“Helen DeWitt, Hand to Mouth.” Review of Helen DeWitt, Some Trick: Thirteen Stories (New York: New Directions, 2018). Public Books, June 22, 2018.

“Comics Studies Comes of Age.” Review of Bart Beaty and Benjamin Woo, The Greatest Comic Book of All Time: Symbolic Capital and the Field of American Comic Books (New York: Palgrave Pivot, 2016). Chronicle of Higher Education, February 19, 2017.

“The Yurt of Fiction.” Review of George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo (New York: Random House, 2017). Public Books, February 9 2017.

“The Hangman of Critique.” Los Angeles Review of Books, July 17, 2016.

“‘Fartcopter’ Has the Answer.” Slate, May 26, 2016.

“We had to get beyond irony: How David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers, and a new generation of believers changed fiction.” Salon, March 27, 2016.

• Excerpt from Cool Characters: Irony and American Fiction (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).

“A Theory of Here.” The Account, no. 4 (2015).

“William Gibson’s Breakfast Burrito.” Review of William Gibson, The Peripheral (New York: Putnam, 2014). Los Angeles Review of Books, December 12, 2014.

“Only Science Fiction Can Save Us!” Slate, September 17, 2014.

“The Eccentric Polish Count Who Influenced Classic SF’s Greatest Writers.” io9, September 5, 2014.

“The One Incorruptible Still Point.” Review of Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge (New York: Penguin, 2013). The Iowa Review 43.3 (Winter 2013/2014): 170-174.

“Dave Eggers is Worried About America.” Review of Dave Eggers, The Circle (New York: Knopf, 2013). The American Prospect, October 30, 2013.

“Kingsley Amis’s SF Addiction.” Review of Kingsley Amis, The Green Man (New York: NYRB Classics, 2013) and The Alteration (New York: NYRB Classics, 2013). Los Angeles Review of Books, October 27, 2013.

“Outborough Destiny.” Review of Jonathan Lethem, Dissident Gardens (New York: Doubleday, 2013). Los Angeles Review of Books, September 8, 2013.

“Periodizing the Present.” Review of Jeffrey Nealon, Post-Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Just-in-Time Capitalism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012). Contemporary Literature 54.2 (Summer 2013): 411-423.

“Barbarians at the Wormhole: On Anthony Burgess.” Review of Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (New York: Norton, 2012) and The Wanting Seed (New York: Norton, 2012). Los Angeles Review of Books, November 14, 2012.

• Republished as “When Sci-Fi Went Mainstream.” Salon, November 15, 2012.

“Too Big to Succeed: On William Gaddis’s J R.” Review of William Gaddis, J R (New York: Dalkey Archive Press, 2012). Los Angeles Review of Books, October 28, 2012.

“‘We’d Hate to Lose You’: On the Biography of David Foster Wallace.” Review of D.T. Max, Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace (New York: Vintage, 2012). Los Angeles Review of Books, September 9, 2012.

“Comics in the Expanded Field: Harkham’s Most Ambitious Anthology Yet.” Review of Kramers Ergot 8 (Brooklyn: PictureBox, 2012). Los Angeles Review of Books, July 13, 2012.

“Relatable Transitional Objects.” Review of Alison Bechdel, Are You My Mother? (New York: Vintage, 2012). The New Inquiry, July 3, 2012.

“Watching Watchmen: A Ripost to Stuart Moulthrop.” electronic book review, January 25, 2012.

“Anti-Comprehension Pills.” Review of Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet (New York: Knopf, 2012). Los Angeles Review of Books, March 28, 2012.

“Never Again, Again.” Review of Art Spiegelman, MetaMaus: A Look Inside a Modern Classic, Maus (New York: Pantheon, 2011). Los Angeles Review of Books, January 30, 2012.

“Hurricane Helen.” Review of Helen DeWitt, Lightning Rods (New York: New Directions, 2011). Los Angeles Review of Books, November 21, 2011.

Review of Sarah Palin in Andrew Altschul, Deus Ex Machina: A Novel (New York: Counterpoint, 2011). The Believer, September 2011: 48-50.

“Unfinished Form.” Review of David Foster Wallace, The Pale King: An Unfinished Novel (New York: Little, Brown, 2011). Los Angeles Review of Books, July 6, 2011. Web.

“William S. Burroughs’ Wild Ride with Scientology.” io9, May 11, 2011.

“WikiLeaks vs. Top Secret America.” AOL News, August 5, 2010.

“Learning to Be Yourself.” Review of Abigail Cheever, Real Phonies: Cultures of Authenticity in Post-World War II America (Atlanta: University of Georgia Press, 2009). Twentieth-Century Literature 56.2 (Summer 2010): 277-85.

“Round or Flat?” Center: A Journal of the Literary Arts 8 (2009): 79-81.

Lectures, Talks, and Other Presentations

Invited Lectures and Talks

“David Foster Wallace’s Déformation Professionnelle.” Keynote Speaker, Annual Conference of the International David Foster Wallace Society, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, June 23, 2023.

“Book Launch: Artful Breakdowns: The Comics of Art Spiegelman.” In Conversation with Christina Walter. March 31, 2023.

“Book Launch: The Last Samurai Reread.” In Conversation with Orrin Wang. Zoom. January 31, 2023.

“Modernist Funnies, or, Comics in the Age of Mass High Culture.” Keynote Speaker, Celebrating Daniel Schwarz: 50 Years of Transformative Teaching, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, March 24, 2018.

“First Year Book: March: Book 3, A Roundtable Discussion.” Participant, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, September 20, 2017.

“Punk’s Positive Dystopia.” Invited Plenary Speaker, GEO Annual Conference, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, March 12, 2016.

“Out of the Box: Page, Screen, and the Ontology of Comics.” Invited Participant, “In Play” Conference, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, March 4, 2016.

“The Lives of Algorithms.” Invited Speaker, The Tyranny of Algorithms, New America Foundation, Washington, DC, December 10, 2015.

“Narrating the Present: A Conversation on Contemporary Literature.” Participant, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, October 15, 2015.

“Sci Fi Subjects and Objects, A Round Table.” Participant, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, March 2, 2015.

“Four Faces of Postirony.” Ropes Lecture, Taft Research Center, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, March 6, 2014.

“Science Fiction.” Invited Speaker, D.C. Art Science Evening Rendezvous (DASER), October 17, 2013.

“Representing Complexity: Intersections of Art and Science.” Participant, Concluding Roundtable, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, March 1, 2013.

“Countercultural Capital, from Irony to Postirony.” Twentieth-Century Studies Group, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, November 2012.

“How to Get a Postdoc.” invited speaker, Stanford University, English Department, Stanford, CA, November 2012.

“Work and Play in Contemporary Narrative and Digital Culture.” Invited Speaker, Professor Ed Finn, Arizona State University, April 2012.

Celebrating the Publication of The Pale King, Invited Speaker, City Arts and Lecture, San Francisco, CA, April 2011.

“Philosophy and Science Fiction.” Invited Speaker, Professor Jeffrey Paris, University of San Francisco, October 2009.

Professional Conference Papers

Participant, “Metafiction, Autofiction, and Other Metanarrative Forms of Storytelling” (seminar), Modernist Studies Association, Brooklyn, NY, October 2023.

“The New Normal,” Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, ASAP/14, Seattle, WA and Bothell, WA, October 2023.

Participant, “Literary Criticism: New Platforms,” round table, Modern Language Association Convention, Modern Language Association, San Francisco, CA, January 2023.

“Beyond the M.O.B.: Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing is Monsters and the Status of Obscenity in a Post-Normative World ,” Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, ASAP/13, Los Angeles, CA, September 15, 2022.

Participant, “Democracy and the Contemporary Novel of the United States” round table, Modern Language Association Convention, Modern Language Association, Washington, DC, January 2022.

“QAnon as Critical Thought,” Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, ASAP/12, Online, October 2021.

Participant, “Millennial Fictions” round table, Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, ASAP/12, Online, October 2021.

“New Greek Weird Family Values,” American Comparative Literature Association, Online, April 2021.

Participant, “Contemporary Autofiction” round table, Modern Language Association Convention, Modern Language Association, Toronto, January 2021.

Participant, “#DuneBookClub,” ASAP/J “Thinking With” event, December 14, 2020.

“Xu Bing’s Big Village,” New Inscriptions Seminar, organized by Paul Benzon and Rita Raley after the cancellation of the ASAP/12 conference due to Covid-19, Online, October 17, 2020.

Participant, “The State of the Single-Author Study,” Modern Language Association Convention, Modern Language Association, Seattle, WA, January 2020.

Participant and Chair, “Alternatives to Criticism,” Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, ASAP/11, College Park, MD., October 2019.

Participant and Chair, “Bookish Transactions: Publishing, Media, Materialism,” Modern Language Association Convention, Modern Language Association, January 2019

“A History of Synergy: The Telecommunications Act of 1996, Miramax Books, and Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai,” Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, ASAP/10, New Orleans, LA, October 2018.

Participant, “Public Arts and Humanities Writing” workshop, Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, ASAP/10, New Orleans, LA, October 2018.

Chair, “Imagining Catastrophe” panel, Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, ASAP/10, New Orleans, LA, October 2018.

“Love and Rockets and Direct Distribution,” Conference of the Comics Studies Society, Urbana, Illinois, August 2018.

“Comic Book Guy: Neoliberalism, the Graphic Novel, and 1986,” panel, American Comparative Literature Association, “The Literary Legacies of the 1980s” seminar, Los Angeles, CA, March 2018.

Participant and Organizer, “The Fiction of Colson Whitehead” roundtable, Modern Language Association, New York City, January 2018.

Participant, “The Los Angeles Review of Books at Six” roundtable, Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, ASAP/9, Oakland, CA, October 2017.

Participant, “The Greatest American Novel of the 21st Century” roundtable, Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, ASAP/9, Oakland, CA, October 2017.

“Xu Bing’s Big Village.” Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, ASAP/9, “Design Cultures,” Oakland, CA, October 2017.

Chair and Respondent, “Reassembling the City” panel, Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, ASAP/9, Oakland, CA, October 2017

“Medium Non-Specificity: Medium, Form, and Visual Storytelling in Dennis Cooper’s Zac’s Haunted House.” American Comparative Literature Association. ”Remediating Form, Then and Now” seminar, Utrecht, The Netherlands, July 2017.

“Rachel Cusk’s Unequal Reality.” International Conference on Narrative, Lexington, KY, 2017.

“The Visual Universalism of Xu Bing’s Book from the Ground.” Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, PA, 2017.

“Infinite Jest’s Near Future.” Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, PA, 2017.

“The Age of Mass High Culture (or, Modernism Meets Market Segmentation).” Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers conference, Washington, DC, 2016.

“Art Spiegelman’s Faustian Deal: The Form and History of Comics Literacy.” Post45 Group UK. York, England, 2016.

“Art Spiegelman’s Children’s Comics and the History of Comics Literacy.” American Comparative Literature Association, “Institutions of Reading” seminar, Cambridge, MA, 2016.

“After the Ideologeme.” Modern Language Association, Austin, TX, 2016.

“Black Box Fictions: Tom McCarthy’s ‘Satin Island,’ Reality Hunger, and the Politics of Algorithmic Intelligibility.” Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts Conference, Houston, TX, 2015.

Participant, “The Comics Canon: What Don’t We Study, and Why?” (roundtable discussion), ASAP/7, Greenville, SC, 2015.

Participant, NEAC, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2015.

“Tao Lin’s Sincerity.” American Comparative Literature Association, “Sincerity, Authenticity, and Affect in the Neoliberal Age” seminar, Seattle, WA, March 2015.

“Approaching The Peripheral: First Responses to William Gibson’s New Novel” (roundtable discussion), Modern Language Association, Vancouver, BC, January 2015.

“Lydia Millet” (roundtable discussion), Modern Language Association, Vancouver, BC, January 2015.

“What is a Turdnagel?” Infinite Wallace / Wallace Infini conference, Paris, September 2014.

“Colson Whitehead’s Zone One and the Generic Turn.” American Literature Association, Washington, DC, May 2014.

“The Credulous Metafiction of David Foster Wallace and Salvador Plascencia.” International Conference on Narrative, Cambridge, MA, March 2014.

“Kathy Acker’s Senseless Punk Urbanism.” ASAP/5, Detroit, MI, October 2013.

“Four Faces of Postirony.” American Literature Association, Boston, MA, May 2013.

“Platform as Constraint, or, the Genre of Helen DeWitt and Ilya Gridneff’s Your Name Here,” Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, ASAP/4, London, UK, October 2012.

“Reanimating Modernism: The 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition in Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth,” American Literature Association, San Francisco, CA, May 2012.

“Bad Attitude: William S. Burroughs at the Birth of Punk.” American Comparative Literature Association, “Bad Reception, Missed Connection, Clogged Circulation” seminar, Providence, RI, April 2012.

“Ecology, World Literature, and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead.” Modern Language Association Convention, Seattle, WA, January 2012.

Participant, Post45, Caltech, Pasadena, CA, November 2011.

“Dystopia Now: Global Realism and Global Reality,” Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, ASAP/3, Pittsburg, PA, Oct 2011.

“Don DeLillo’s Style of Dread: From The Names to Point Omega.” American Literature Association Convention, Boston, MA, May 2011.

“Michael Muhammad Knight’s The Taqwacores and the Genealogy of Punk.” Post45 Conference, Cleveland, OH, April 2011.

“Graphic Narratives: Exploring Intertextuality and Multi-modal Writing” (participant), 62nd CCCC Convention, Atlanta, GA, April 2011.

“Periodization, Embedded Liberalism, and Lionel Trilling’s The Middle of the Journey.” American Comparative Literature Association, “Institutions of Periodization” seminar, Vancouver, BC, March 2011.

“Desymbolizing Kenneth Burke: Modernism, Invisible Man, and the Theory of Symbolic Action.” Modernist Studies Association 12, “Modernist Studies Without Modernism II: Historiographies of the Twentieth-Century Archive” panel, Victoria, B.C., November 2011.

“The Paraliterary Present: Everson, Neoliberalism, and William Gibson’s Spook Country.” American Comparative Literature Association, “Paraworlds and Paraliterature” seminar, New Orleans, LA, April 2010.

“The Legacy of David Foster Wallace” (roundtable discussion), Modern Language Association Convention, Philadelphia, December 2009.

“The Cosmopolitanism of High Finance in Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis.” American Comparative Literature Association, “Master of the Universe: Literature, Culture, and Finance Culture” seminar, Cambridge, MA, March 2009.

“The Brand as Cognitive Map in William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition.” American Literature Association Convention, San Francisco, CA, May 2008.

“The Cooptation Problem: Postirony in Alex Shakar’s The Savage Girl.” Modern Language Association Convention, Philadelphia, PA, December 2006.

Professional Conference Sessions Organized

“The New Normal: Normativity, Critique, Neoliberalism” (panel), Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, ASAP/14, Seattle, WA and Bothell, WA, October 2023.

“The New Liberal Arts: or, How to Decolonize the Humanities without Defunding It” (panel), Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, ASAP/12, Online, October 2021.

“Consensus in Fragments: Literature, Normativity, and Social Trust after 1989” (seminar), American Comparative Literature Association, Online, April 2021.

“Alternatives to Criticism” (roundtable), Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, ACLA/11, College Park, MD, October 2019.

”Bookish Transactions: Publishing, Media, Materialism” (roundtable) Modern Language Association Convention, Modern Language Association, Chicago, IL, January 2019.

“The Literary Legacies of the 1980s” (seminar), American Comparative Literature Association, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, March 2018.

“The Fiction of Colson Whitehead” (roundtable), Modern Language Association Convention, New York City, January 2018.

“Institutions of Reading” (seminar), American Comparative Literature Association, Cambridge, MA, March 2016.

“The Legacy of David Foster Wallace” (roundtable), Modern Language Association Convention, Philadelphia, PA, December 2009.

“Postirony in Theory and Fiction” (special session), Modern Language Association Convention, Philadelphia, PA, December 2006.

Fellowships, Prizes and Awards

Arcan Semester Research Award, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, Fall 2019.

2013-2014 Harry Ransom Center Research Fellowship in the Humanities (Supported by the Norman Mailer Endowed Fund), Austin, TX.

Summer Research and Scholarship Award, University of Maryland, College Park, Summer 2013.

Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship, Program in Writing and Rhetoric, Stanford University, 2009-2011.

PWR Annual Research Award, Stanford University, 2010.

Graduate Research Opportunities—Modern British History and Culture Award, Stanford University, Spring 2009.

Killefer Fellowship, Stanford University, 2007-2008.

Graduate Research Opportunities Award, Stanford University, Summer 2007.

Fellowship, Department of English, Stanford University, 2002-2007.

Editorships and Reviewing Activities for Journals

Editorships

Acquiring Editor, Los Angeles Review of Books, August 2019-Present

Humanities Editor, Los Angeles Review of Books, September 2012-August 2019.

Managing Director, The Stanford Storytelling Project, Stanford University, September 2009-May 2011. http://storytelling.stanford.edu.

Fiction Editor, The Stanford Storytelling Project, Stanford University, September 2007-August 2009.

Reviewing Activities

American Literary History

Bloomsbury

Christianity and Literature

Contemporary Literature

Cambridge University Press

Columbia University Press

Harvard University Press

Ideograph

Johns Hopkins University Press

Journal of American Studies

Mediations: Journal of the Marxist Literary Group

Modern Fiction Studies

Palgrave Macmillan

PMLA

Post45: Peer Reviewed

Rutgers University Press

Stanford University Press

University of Mississippi Press

Other Writing and Organizing

Local Organizer, ASAP/11 Conference, College Park, MD, October 2019.

Invited Participant, The Future of Reading, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, May 2014.

Invited Participant, Sprint Beyond the Book, Frankfurt, Germany, October 2013.

Organizer, “MOOCs and the Future of the Humanities: A Roundtable.” Los Angeles Review of Books, June 14-15, 2013.

Organizer, #OccupyGaddis. Los Angeles Review of Books, Summer 2012.

Contributor, Arcade: A Digital Salon, January 2010-Present. http://arcade.stanford.edu/blogs/lee-konstantinou.

Interviews Conducted

An interview with Helen DeWitt, Los Angeles Review of Books, November 21, 2011.

A Micro-Interview with Mark McGurl, The Believer, May 2009: 31+.

3. Teaching, Mentoring and Advising.

Courses Taught

Undergraduate (University of Maryland, 2012-Present)

ENGL146: Seeing the Present: Graphic Storytelling in the Age of Social Media. I-Course.

• Spring 2020, 100 students.
• Spring 2021, 100 students.
• Spring 2022, 93 students.

ENGL301: Critical Methods in the Study of Literature, Seminar.

• Fall 2014, 22 students.

ENGL321: Comics and the Graphic Novel [formerly titled “American Comics”]. Seminar.

• Spring 2017, 24 students.
• Fall 2021, 25 students.

ENGL321-WB11: Comics and the Graphic Novel. Asynchronous online course.

• Winter 2020, 9 students.
• Winter 2022, 20 students.

ENGL346: Twentieth-Century Fiction, Seminar.

• Fall 2012, 30 students.
• Fall 2013, 30 students.
• Spring 2014, 30 students.
• Spring 2016, 30 students.

ENGL376: The Speculative Imagination: Science Fiction on Page and Screen. Seminar.

• Fall 2020, 25 students.
• Fall 2022, 26 students.

ENGL379Y: American Science Fiction. Fall 2015, 30 students.

• Fall 2017, 25 students.

ENG441: The American Novel in America After 1914.

• Spring 2019, 19 students.

ENGL437: Contemporary American Literature.

• Fall 2017, 25 students.
• Fall 2020. 13 students.
• Fall 2021, 20 students.
• Summer I 2022, 11 students.

ENGL475: Postmodern Literature, Seminar.

• Fall 2012, 25 students
• Spring 2013, 25 students
• Fall 2016, 25 students.
• Spring 2016, 25 students

ENGL488J: The Posthuman Imagination.

• Fall 2015, 5 students.

HONR238O: Imagining Our Future: The Art and Craft of Science Fiction, University Honors Seminar.

• Spring 2017, 19 students.

HONR278J: The Posthuman Imagination, University Honors Seminar.

• Spring 2013, 12 students.

Graduate (University of Maryland, 2012-Present)

ENGL601: Literary Research and Critical Contexts.

• Spring 2020, 6 students.
• Fall 2022, 11 students.

ENGL631: Readings in 20th Century American Literature.

• Fall 2013, 19 students.

ENGL648: Contemporary American Literature.

• Fall 2016, 15 students.
• Spring 2018, 18 students.

ENGL701: Cultures of Theory: Speculative Narrative from Romanticism to the Contemporary

• Spring 2022, 6 students.

ENGL748G: The Graphic Novel.

• Fall 2014, 14 students.

Undergraduate (Princeton University, 2011-2012)

“Science Fiction in Global Perspective.” Lecture Course.

• Spring 2012, 70 students.

“Literature and Culture after 9/11.”

• Spring 2012, 8 students.

“Rise of the Graphic Novel.”

• Fall 2011, 70 students.

Undergraduate (Stanford University, 2010-2011)

“Rhetoric in Crisis.” PWR 2 Course.

• Spring 2011, 18 students.

“Rhetoric, Social Media, and Virtual Worlds.” PWR 1 Course.

• Autumn 2010, 20 students.
• Winter 2011, 20 students.

“The Politics and Rhetoric of Satire.” PWR 1 Course.

• Autumn 2009, 20 students.
• Winter 2010, 20 students.
• Spring 2010, 20 students.

Advising

Undergraduate Honors Senior Project (as Reader)

Casey Schreck (Apr. 2021)

Hunter Sparks (May 2020)

Ethan Welsh (May 2020)

Ely Vance (Apr. 2016)

J. R. Reid (Apr. 2014)

Master’s Capstone Project (as Reader)

Joshua McGarry (ongoing)

Dominique Dureau (Sept. 2017)

Jennifer Ausden (Apr. 2014)

Calvin Webb (Aug. 2014)

Doctoral Dissertation (as Reader)

Zachary Johnson (ongoing, American Studies)

Miranda Wei (Apr. 2021)

Kyle Bickoff (Apr. 2021)

Lauren Flanigan (Nov. 2020)

Elise Marie Auvil (Aug. 2020)

Kathryn Kaczmarek Frew (May 2020)

Brian Davis (May 2020)

Sarah Wanenchak (May 2019)

John Macintosh (Dec. 2018)

Nick Slaughter (Apr. 2017)

Audrey Farley (Mar. 2017)

Nathaniel Underland (Mar. 2016)

Kyle Garton-Gundling (Sept. 2013)

Michael Rosenberg (May 2013)

Non-UMD Doctoral Dissertation (as Reader)

Ashley Winstead (Southern Methodist University; May 2016)

Doctoral Qualifying Exam (as Committee Member)

John Macintosh (Oct. 2014)

Audrey Farley (Sept. 2014)

Joslyn Bloomfield (June 2014)

Nick Slaughter (Nov. 2013)

Michael Colson (Oct. 2013)

Advising: Research Direction

Undergraduate Honors Senior Project (as Director)

Alexys Lopez (ongoing)

Michael Lawrence (Apr. 2015)

Shane Goodhue (Apr. 2014)

Kelsey Cycan (May 2013)

Master’s Capstone Project (as Director)

Amina Farahat (May 2021)

Kristen Gray (Dec. 2017)

Lenaya Stewart (May 2017)

Vincent Freeland (Apr. 2017)

Jessica Stoltz (Apr. 2017)

Trent McDonald (January 2017)

Doctoral Qualifying Exam (as Chair)

James Rankin (May 2020)

Collier Cobb IV (May 2015)

Dan Kason (Oct. 2014, co-chair with Brian Richardson)

Doctoral Dissertation (as Director)

James Rankin (ongoing)

Andy Nunn (May 2023)

Dan Kason (Mar. 2020)

4. Service.

Professional

Memberships in Professional Organizations

American Comparative Literature Association.

Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present.

The International Society for the Study of Narrative.

Modern Language Association.

Reviewing Activities for Agencies

Reviewer, Nomination for MacArthur Fellows Program, 2015.

Other Non-University Activities

Member, Science Fiction Advisory Council, XPRIZE, 2017-Present.

Future Tense Fellow, New America Foundation, Washington, DC, 2015-Present.

Judge, Philip K. Dick Award, 2016.

Delegate Assembly Member, Comics and Graphic Narrative Discussion Group, Modern Language Association, 2017-Present.

Campus

Departmental Committees

Member, APT Committee

• Rion Scott, 2020–2021

Member, Creative Writing Fiction Search Committee, Department of English, University of Maryland, College Park, 2016-2017.

Member, Undergraduate Studies Committee, Department of English, University of Maryland, College Park

• 2016–2017
• 2017–2018

Member, Placement Committee, Department of English, University of Maryland, College Park

• 2017–2019

Member, Graduate Studies Committee, Department of English, University of Maryland, College Park

• 2014–2015
• 2015–2016
• 2016–2017
• 2017–2018
• 2018–2019
• 2021–2022
• 2022–2023

Member, Salary Committee, Department of English, University of Maryland, College Park

• 2012–2013
• 2013–2014
• 2014–2015

Departmental Events

Co-moderator, “Where Do You Know From? Antiracist Pedagogies” CLCS, Aug. 24, 2020.

Local Organizer, ASAP/11, the annual conference of the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, Oct. 10-12, 2019, College Park, Maryland.

Organizer and Co-founder, Media Theory/Studies Faculty Research and Writing Group, 2016–2018.

Organizer, J. Cecilia Cárdenas-Navia talk, “The Melanin Chronicles: Emancipatory Visions of the Sciences of Skin Color in Post-Racial Worlds.” May 12, 2016.

Organizer and Co-founder, Contemporary Fiction Reading Group, University of Maryland, College Park, 2013-2018.

Organizer, “David Foster Wallace at Granada House: A Reading and Conversation with D. T. Max, author of Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace.” Feb. 5, 2014.

Community

Invited Speaker, Discussion on Comics and the Graphic Novel, The Nora School, Silver Spring, MD, Dec. 15, 2015.

Invited Speaker, Film Screening of The End of the Tour, Old Greenbelt Theatre, Aug., 24, 2015.