“The U.S. Literature Survey Course: What’s Going On?” Invited panel participant, Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States Annual Conference (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA; April 2017).
“What We Talk About When We Talk About the English Major.” Invited panel participant. Modern Language Association Annual Convention (Philadelphia, January 2017).
“CLR James and Literary Culture.” Invited moderator/respondent, CLR James Now! (CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY: November 2016).
“19th Century Childhood and Material Culture.” Invited Panel Respondent. C19 Biennial Conference (Penn State, State College: March 2016).
“‘C’ is for Child: A Vocabulary of Childhood Studies.” Invited Speaker, Child Matters (University of Indiana, Bloomington: October 2015).
“Loss, Amputation, and the Impossibility of the Heavenly Child after the Civil War” Invited speaker, Critical Childhood Studies Seminar. Texas A&M University (College Station, TX: April 2015)
“What’s a Nice Prosthesis Like You Doing in a Séance Like This: A Prehistory of the Cyborg.” Invited speaker, Queer/Crip Technologies (The New School,New York, NY: February 2015).
“Writing the Performing Self: 19th Century Actresses’ Autobiographies.” Invited talk. (University of Wisconsin, Madison: October 2014).
“‘We have our nation, and who cannot love it?’: Actorly Self-Representation in the National Commons.” C19 Biennial Conference (Chapel Hill, NC: March 2014).
“Blood, Disability, and the Meanings of Japanese American Citizenship in WWII” (invited talk). Kupferberg Holocaust Center and Archives (Queensborough Community College, December 2013).
“Amputation, Loss, and the Dead Child: Rethinking Grief after the Civil War.” American Studies Association Annual Convention (Washington, DC, November 2013).
The Children’s Table: Childhood Studies and the Humanities. Roundtable participant. (Hunter College, November 2013).
“‘Ira Aldridge Theorizes Difference” Triumph in My Song: 18th & 19th Century African Atlantic Culture, History, & Performance (University of Maryland, June 2012).
“Failure to Thrive: Resisting the Bildungsroman.” Panel respondent. C19 Biennial Conference (Berkeley, CA: April 2012).
“Greenhorns, Bowery B’hoys, and Cardsharps: Urban Masculinities in A Glance at New York.” Modern Language Association Convention (Los Angeles, CA, January 2011).
“‘Irreverence and the American Spirit’: Immigrant Parents, American Adolescents, and the Invention of the Generation Gap” (invited panelist). History by Generations Conference, German Historical Institute (Washington, D.C., December 2010).
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin and its Contexts” (invited speaker). Metropolitan Playhouse (New York, NY, December 2010).
“Staging Temperance: The Drunkard and the Temperance Movement in the mid-19th Century.” (invited speaker). Metropolitan Playhouse (New York, NY, October 2010).
“‘One Ballad of the Ball’: The Henry Street Settlement Journal and the Sexual Politics of Dancing” (invited panelist). American Literature Association Conference (San Francisco, CA, May 2010)
“American Studies in New York City” (invited panelist). New York City in American Studies/American Studies in New York City , Columbia University American Studies Faculty Seminar Workshop (New York, NY, April 2010).
“Spectacular Men: Race, Gender, and Nation on the Early American Stage.” Keynote Speech. Articulations: 2010 Annual ASCA International Workshop.” (Amsterdam, The Netherlands, March 2010)
“Historicizing Youth Studies.” Keynote speech, Youth Studies and Higher Education Conference. (New York, NY, May 2009).
“Inventing Modern Adolescence” (invited talk). City College, CUNY (New York, NY, April 2009)
“Picturing Labor: Lewis W. Hine, the Child Labor Movement, and the Meanings of Adolescent Work.” Modern Language Association Convention (San Francisco, CA, December 2008).
“What We Talk About When We Talk About Queer Theory.” Montclair State University Women’s Studies Speaker Series (Montclair, NJ, March 2008).
“Thinking about Lesbian Reading.” University of Connecticut Rainbow Center series (Storrs, CT, January 2007).
“‘Youth Demands Amusement’: Dancing, Dancehalls, and the Exercise of Adolescent Freedom.” American Studies Program Speaker Series, CUNY Graduate Center (New York, NY April 2006).
“Representing Disabilities.” American Historical Association Convention (Philadelphia, PA, January 2006).
“Ira Aldridge, The Black Doctor, and the Meanings of Exile.” Modern Language Association Convention (Washington, DC, December 2005).
Respondent, “Talk is Cheap?” (Plenary Roundtable) From Tea Parties to Free Speech Zones: Activism and American Culture. New York Metro American Studies Association Annual Conference (New York, NY, October 2004).
“Structures of Imperial Feeling: The Mexican-American War and Nostalgic Nationalism.” War in the American Mind. CUNY Graduate Center (New York, NY, November 2003)
“New Trends in American Studies.” CUNY Faculty Senate Conference. City College, CUNY (New York, NY, November 2002).
“Feeling Her Way: Audre Lorde and the Power of Touch.” Gender and Disability Studies Conference, Rutgers University (New Brunswick, NJ, March 2001).
“The Pleasures of Being Ordinary: Blood, Race, and Citizenship in the 1940s.” Power of Pleasure Speaker Series, Yale University (New Haven, CT, November 2000)
“The Book of Life: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and the Language of DNA.” Trinity College Women’s Center Speaker Series (Hartford, CT, October 2000).
Chair, “Lesbian and Jewish: A Panel of Writers,” Jewish Community Center of the Upper West Side (February 2000)
Respondent, “Queer Studies/Disability Studies” panel, American Studies Association Conference (Montreal, October 1999).
“Taking Ourselves Seriously: Complex Readings and the Thrill of the Unknowable.” Behind Our Masks Queer Writers’ Conference (Washington, D.C., November 1998).
“Reading the Body as Evidence” (panel chair), Nineteenth Century Studies Association Conference (Huntsville, AL, April 1998)
“A Show of Hands: Establishing Identity in Pudd’nhead Wilson,” Nineteenth Century Studies Association Conference (Huntsville, AL, April 1998)
“Anne Hutchinson’s Disembodied Heresy,” Guest Lecture, Franklin & Marshall College (Lancaster, PA, November 1997)
“A Mighty Stream: Blood as Citizenship in W.W.II,” Society for Literature and Science (Pittsburgh, November 1997)
Panel Chair, “Race and Reform in the Nineteenth Century,” American Studies Association Convention (Washington, D.C., October 1997).
“‘Bathe Me in the Electric Lights:’ Gertrude Stein and the Wonders of Modern Science,” NorthEast Modern Language Association Convention (Washington, D.C., April 1997)
“American Studies in the Twenty-First Century”(Plenary Address), America, Inc.: Reconstituting American Studies (Columbia University, New York, March 1996)
“The Veiled Lady Reveals It All: Hawthorne Tells the Future,” NorthEast Modern Language Association Convention (Boston, MA, April 1995)
“Gertrude Stein at the Boundaries of Language: Old and Old and the Millenium,” Modern Language Association Convention (San Diego, CA, December 1994)
“Queer Emily Dickinson,” 6th Lesbian and Gay Studies Conference (University of Iowa, Iowa City, November 1994)
“Our Nig and the Politics of Self, Sentiment, and Nation,” The Domestic Space of Race and Nation: History and American Studies Colloquium Series (Columbia University, New York, October 1994).
“New Medievalism in the New World: Comparative Heresies,” Deviance and Dissent: 4th Annual Columbia Medieval Guild Conference (Columbia University, New York, November, 1993).
“Domesticity and Autoeroticism in the Short Stories of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman,” 3rd Graduate Student Conference on Queer Studies (University of Minnesota, April 1993)
