A short CV is available here.
Professional Appointments
Professor of English, Miami University of Ohio, 2014 to present
Assistant Professor of English, Texas Tech University, 2009-2014
Education
Ph.D., English, University of California, Irvine, 2009
M.A., English, University of California, Irvine, 2004
B.A., English, summa cum laude, Boston University, 2001
Books
Rachel Carson Reading (in progress).
Coral Lives: Literature, Labor, and the Making of America (Princeton University Press, 2023).
Liquid Landscape: Geography and Settlement at the Edge of Early America (U of Pennsylvania Press 2018). *
* Winner of the 2019 Rembert Patrick Award and the 2019 Stetson Kennedy Award from the Florida Historical Society.
Peer-reviewed essays
“Emerson Undersea.” Co-authored, Dominic Mastroianni. The Oxford Handbook of Ralph Waldo Emerson (2024).
"Antebellum Coral." American Literature 91.2 (2019): 263-293.
"Island Nation: Mapping Florida, Revising America." Early American Studies 11.2 (2013): 243-271.
"Liquid Landscape: Possession and Floridian Geography." Early American Literature 47.1 (2012): 89-114.
Selected additional essays
“Climate change is destroying reefs, but the effects are more than ecological.” The Conversation (2023).
“Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Florida,” Once Upon a Time in Florida: Stories of Life in the Land of Promises. Edited by Jacki Levine. University of Florida Press (2023).
“Gulf of Knowledge: The Hidden Scientific History of the Early American Southeast.” Southern Spaces (2019).
“Coral, Labor, Slavery, and Silence in the Archives.” Age of Revolutions (2019).
"A Book Full of Seaweed." Huntington Frontiers Magazine. (Spring/Summer 2018): 8-12.
Fellowships, Honors, and Awards
See above, “Grants & Awards”
selected interviews
“Reader Spotlight: Michele Navakas on the Cultural History of Coral,” Library Company Blog (2019).
“America’s Erstwhile Coral Obsession,” Shelf Life, a Newberry Library Podcast (2018).
Interview on Liquid Landscape, Ideasphere with Guy Rathbun, KCBX (NPR), San Luis Obispo (2017).
”A Brief History of Florida’s Landscape,” Gulf Coast Live with Julie Glenn, WGCU (NPR), Fort Myer
Full CV available upon request.