Published papers

This study examines Robert Bierman's film Vampire's Kiss (1989) and how the actions of protagonist Peter Loew (Nicolas Cage) relate to common conceptions of the vampire as they were presented in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula (1897) and F. W. Murnau's film Nosferatu (1922). Loew's behavior is analyzed in reference to Richard Noll's concept of Renfield's syndrome, as the character is shown to systematically advance through the stages of auto-vampirism, zoophagia, and vampirism. Why Loew is attracted to the vampire lifestyle, and the role New York City plays in his transformation is also explored.

This study aims to show that the philosophical underpinnings of Andy Warhol's visual, cinematic, and literary works foreshadowed the attitudes and behavior of our current Internet obsessed society. Warhol's work is discussed in relation to social media, reality TV, and YouTube. As a display of the efficacy of online tools to contextualize literary passages, sections of Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett's POPism: The Warhol Sixties are analyzed using common Internet inquiry methods.

This study examines Hiromichi Ugaya's Portrait of Fukushima 2011-2015: Life After Meltdown. Though Ugaya's book is ostensibly a work of photojournalism, here it is argued that the human-to-nature interplay and the poetic finesse of the captions that accompany the images place it squarely in the realm of nature writing. Edward Abbey, Wendell Berry and Henry David Thoreau are discussed in relation to Portrait of Fukushima.

This study explores how Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock's (1912-1956) Action Painting style infused the work of poet Frank O'hara (1926-1966). In striving to isolate this aesthetic link, sections of O'Hara's poetry are analyzed and discussed in relation to Pollock's painting techniques.O'Hara's eagerness to absorb Pollock's ideology is portrayed as typical of the spirit of the times in New York City in the 1950s, where a belief in the interrelatedness of the various artistic disciplines was prevalent.