My name is Vanessa. In 2023, I completed my PhD in English. I am trained in Modern Literature and Critical Theory.

My dissertation, Impossible Art, draws on studies in clinical synesthesia to explore cross-modal works of art and literature from the Modernist period. Check out more on Impossible Art here.

Here’s what makes me different: my approach is always that of aesthetics, which I understand as the study of perception. Following the eighteenth century German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, who defines aesthetics as “the science of sensitive knowing,” I see aesthetics as an epistemology. The insight that aesthetics is a method of knowing, guides all my academic activity from reading and research to writing to teaching.

In fact, my view on aesthetics as perceptive sensitivity influences every facet of my life. The cultivation, movement, and perception of energy is a fundamental principle for me. I am a reiki practitioner with a daily meditation practice. I am a poet, a painter, and a long-distance runner. For me, aesthetics is a guiding ethic that foregrounds the cohesion of my own experiences while allowing me to expand into new creative areas without feeling limited by categories or societal ideas around normativity.

My position on energy and aesthetics is also the motivation for my work with Queer Theory. My work in Queer Theory has to do with perceptive postures that facilitate receptivity to new and unfamiliar forms of being and expressing. Check out more on my work with Queer Theory here.