Laura Finch

Education

2016

• Ph.D. Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, University of Pennsylvania
  Dissertation: “Personal Finance: Economic Citizenship and Financial Form in the Contemporary Novel”
  Committee: James F. English (Chair), Paul K. Saint-Amour, Michael Tratner

2013

• M.A. Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, University of Pennsylvania

2008

• M.A. (Distinction), Critical Theory, University of Sussex
  Thesis: “‘Only the spear that smote you can heal your wound’: Language Against Language in Theodor Adorno and Samuel Beckett”

2006

• B.A. (First Class), English Literature, University of Sussex

Academic appointments

2018  - 

• Assistant Professor, Literature Department, MIT

2017 - 2020     

• Society of Fellows / Associate Professor in the Department of English Literature and Language, University of Michigan

2016 - 2017

• Gillespie Visiting Assistant Professor of English, The College of Wooster

Publications

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

• “Finance, Postmodernism, and Race.” The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Economics, eds Paul Crosthwaite, Peter Knight, and Nicky Marsh, forthcoming

• “It’s the Economy, Stupid: On the Costs of Marginalising the Aesthetic.” American Literary History, November 2019

• “Global Finance and Scale,” in The Routledge Companion to Literature and Economics, eds Michelle Chihara and Matthew Seybold, November 2018

• “Globalising Finance: Nostalgia, Desire, and the Market in Contemporary Shanghai,” Comparative Literature Studies, March 2018

• “The Un-Real Deal: Financial Fiction, Fictional Finance, and the Financial Crisis,” Journal of American Studies, November 2015

Book Reviews

• "Possessed and Dispossessed" - Review of Annie McClanahan, Dead Pledges: Debt, Crisis, and Twenty-First-Century Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017) Journal of Cultural Economy, 2017

• "White Collar, White Archive" - Review of Jasper Bernes, The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization (Stanford: Stanford University Press), boundary2, 2017

• Review of Sara Crangle, Prosaic Desires: Modernist Knowledge, Boredom, Laughter, and Anticipation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010) Journal of Modern Literature, Fall 2012, Vol. 36 No. 1. 191-195

• Review of Tammy Clewell, Mourning, Modernism, Postmodernism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) Textual Practice, 2011, Vol. 25, No. 5. 968-972

Awards and Fellowships

2017-2020

• Society of Fellows, University of Michigan

2015

• A. Owen Aldridge Prize for Outstanding Essay by a Graduate Student, American Comparative Literature Association

2015-16

• Penn Program on Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism Fellow, University of Pennsylvania

• Boies Family Fellow, University of Pennsylvania

2014

• GAPSA-Provost Award for Interdisciplinary Innovation, University of Pennsylvania

2014-15

• Critical Writing Teaching Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania

2013-14

• Penn Humanities Forum Mellon Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania

2013

• Center for Teaching and Learning Teaching Certificate, University of Pennsylvania

2009-2014

• Benjamin Franklin Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania

Conference participation

Panels Organised

 2019

• “Infrastructures of White Supremacy,” Association for the Study of the Arts and the Present.

• “Work, Post-Work and Labor: Contemporary Claims on Value,” American Literature Association.

2018            

• “Postindustrial Environments,” American Literature Association.

2017               

• “Contemporary Girlhood in Words and Images,” Association for the Study of the Arts and the Present.

2016

• “Revisiting the Archive: Finance and Contemporary Literature,” American Comparative Literature Association Conference

2015-16

• Monthly Workshop Series Organiser. Penn Program in Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism, University of Pennsylvania

2015

• Co-Organiser of “Locating Post-45.” Conference at the University of Pennsylvania

2014

• Co-Organiser of “Violent Means.” Graduate Humanities Forum Symposium, University of Pennsylvania

Papers Presented

2020

• “Abstraction, Whiteness, and Serial Killers in post-1970s U.S. Culture.” American Comparative Literature Association Conference, Chicago

• “Building Utopias through Assignments.” Teaching 21st Century Literature, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

• “Revolutions Without Futures.” Invited Talk, Critical and Contemporary Conversations, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

• “Revolutionary Spaces in Financial Times.” Invited Talk, California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles

2019

• “Finance and Black Urban Geographies.” Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present, University of Maryland

•   “There are New Suns: Studying Literature at MIT.” MIT

•   “Making a Killing: Finance, Violence, and Race in the 21st Century American Novel.” Invited Talk, MIT

• “Making a Killing: Finance, Violence, and Race in the 21st Century American Novel.” Invited Talk, University of Michigan      

• “Race and Finance in Contemporary South African Visual Art.” Invited Talk, California Institute of the Arts

2018

• “Economics at the Nanoscale: Embodied Finance and the Representation of Race in Contemporary South African Literature.” Invited Lecture. Critical Finance Studies Lecture Series, Dartmouth College.

• “Making a Killing: Finance, Violence, and the Shaping of American Cities.” Visiting Committee Talk, MIT, MA.

• “How Does a State Feel?: Bureaucracies, Infrastructure, Aesthetics” (Respondent). American Studies Conference, Atlanta, GA

• “Racial Capitalism in Urban South Africa.” Association for the Study of the Present, New Orleans.

• "Finance, Visibility, and Race in Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist," American Literature Association Conference, San Francisco, CA

• “What is 21st Century Literature?” Critical and Contemporary Studies, University of Michigan, MI    

2017

•  “Economics at the Nanoscale in Lauren Beukes’s Moxyland," Society of Fellows, University of Michigan

•  "Finance and Space in Contemporary New York," American Studies Association, Chicago, IL

2016

• “The Nostalgia of Finance in Contemporary Shanghai,” American Literature Association Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA,

• “Beyond Wall Street: De-Centring Finance in the Contemporary Transnational Novel,” British Association of American Studies Conference

2015

• “Global Finance in the Contemporary Anglophone Novel,” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, Portland, Oregon

• “Transnational Finance in Tash Aw’s Five Star Billionaire,” Mods Colloquium, University of Pennsylvania

• “Architecture and Form,” Dartmouth Futures of American Studies Institute

• “Concrete Violence: the Financialisation of Urban Space in American Psycho,” American Comparative Literature Association Conference

2014

• “The Failure of Realism in Jonathan Franzen,” Penn Humanities Forum, University of Pennsylvania

• “Concrete Violence: the Financialisation of Urban Space in American Psycho,” South Atlantic Modern Language Association

• “Financial Fiction, Fictional Finance: Genres of the Recent Financial Crisis," Modern Language Association Conference

2012

• “The Real Deal: Financial Fiction After the Crash,” American Comparative Literature Association Conference

2011

• ‘“living on burrow time’: Earthy History in Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker,” Postgraduate Conference, King’s College London

• “‘like a bullet through blancmange’: The Violence of Style in P.G. Wodehouse,” Modernism Across Borders Conference, University of Pennsylvania

2009

• “Reification, Repetition, and Reliquification: The Three Rs of Adorno’s Prose Style,” Social and Political Thought Conference, University of Sussex

Exhibitions

2015

• “From the Bomb to the Crash: Geographies of Disaster in the American Century.” Exhibition at “Locating Post-45,” University of Pennsylvania, March 19-20

2014

• “From the Bomb to the Crash: Geographies of Disaster in the American Century.” Presentation of research and exhibition. The Green Line, Philadelphia, September-November

Teaching experience

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• 21st Century Science Fiction
  Intermediate Seminar, Fall 2022

• Thinking With Plants and Animals

  Introductory Seminar, Fall 2022

• 21st Century Science Fiction
  Intermediate Seminar, Spring 2022

• Debt: Obligations, Intimacies, Entanglements

  Introductory Seminar, Fall 2021

• Debt: Obligations, Intimacies, Entanglements

  Introductory Seminar, Spring 2021 (virtual)

• 21st Century Science Fiction
  Intermediate Seminar, Spring 2021 (virtual)

• Space Invaders: Land, Occupation, & Resistance in Contemporary Film & Literature
  Upper Level Seminar, Spring 2019

• Writing Place in Contemporary World Literature
  Introductory Seminar, Fall 2018

• 21st Century Science Fiction
  Intermediate Seminar, Fall 2018

University of Michigan

• Science Fiction and Social Justice

  Upper-Level Seminar, Spring 2020

•  21st Century Science Fiction

  Upper-Level Seminar, Spring 2018

 College of Wooster

• Writing the Global City
  Introductory English Seminar, Instructor, Spring 2017

• Girls in Contemporary Literature
  Upper-Level English Seminar, Instructor, Spring 2017

• American Cities in the 20th Century
  Upper-Level English Seminar, Instructor, Fall 2016

• Feminist Science Fiction
  Upper-Level English Seminar, Instructor, Fall 2016

• Literary Natures
  Introductory English Seminar, Instructor, Fall 2016

University of Pennsylvania

• Settings and Selves in American Literature
  Pre-Freshman Program, Coordinator and Instructor, Summer 2015, 2016

• Gold Fever: Money and the Twentieth-Century American Novel
  Upper-Level Seminar, Instructor, Fall 2013

• Senior Writing Tutor
  Graduate Writing Tutor, 2014-2016

• Capitalism and Superheroes
  Critical Writing, Instructor, Fall and Spring 2014-15

• Narratives of Medicine
  Critical Writing, Instructor, Spring 2013

• The Uncanny
  Critical Writing, Instructor, Spring 2012

• The Haunted House of American Fiction
  Critical Writing, Instructor, Fall 2011

• Madness and Madmen in European Literature
  Teaching Assistant, Spring 2011

• Portraits of Russian Society
  Teaching Assistant, Fall 2010

Advising

• Concentration Advisor, Literature Section, MIT 2022-23

• Reader on MA Theses in Comparative Media Studies and Architecture, MIT 2022 

• Concentration Advisor, Literature Section, MIT 2020-21

• Faculty Advisor, English Honors Thesis Program, University of Michigan, 2019-20

• Faculty Advisor, English Honors Thesis Program, University of Michigan, 2017-18

• Senior Independent Studies Director, College of Wooster, 2016-17

Professional and Institutional Service

2021-22

• Job search committee, hire in 20th-Century Fiction, MIT

• Member of the Literature section Curriculum Committee, MIT

• Member of the Literature section website re-design committee, MIT

• Peer Reviewer for Contemporary Literature

2020-2021

• Job search committee, Hire in Global/Indigenous Film, MIT

• Peer reviewer for the Journal of Modern Literature

2019-20          

• Reader and member of the Awards Committee for the Rackham Dissertation Prize, University of Michigan

• Reader of applications for the Society of Fellows, University of Michigan

2018-19          

• Member of the Awards Committee for the Kelly-Douglas Essay Prize for Excellence in Humanistic Scholarship, MIT

• Reader of applications for the MIT Predoctoral Diversity Fellowship, MIT

• Member of the Literature Section Curriculum Committee, MIT

2016-2017

• Co-Chair, Hilty Committee, College of Wooster

• Committee Member for Senior Independent Thesis Award, College of Wooster

• Careers in English Workshop, College of Wooster

2014-15

• Chair of Comparative Literature Association of Students, University of Pennsylvania

2011-12

• Chair of Comparative Literature Association of Students, University of Pennsylvania

2011-14

• Research Assistant for Professor Kevin Platt, Chair of Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania

2008-09

• Organiser of Social and Political Thought Discussion Series, University of Sussex

Research and Teaching Interests

20th and 21st-century US and Global Anglophone novels, Indigenous Studies, Critical Race Theory, Girls’ Studies, Urban Studies, modernism and postmodernism, literature and finance, contemporary speculative fiction, political economy, literary theory, the Frankfurt School

Languages

French: Reading (good), speaking (conversational), writing (with dictionary)
Latin: Reading (good)
Spanish: Reading (with dictionary), speaking (conversational)

Professional Membership

American Comparative Literature Association
American Literature Association
American Studies Association
Association for the Study of the Arts and the Present
British Association of American Studies
Modern Language Association
Pacific and Ancient Modern Language Association
South Atlantic Modern Language Association