Academic Research

  • Shannon Lambert is a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University, Belgium. Her work on topics like science and narrative, environmental affect, and the nonhuman in literature has been published in journals such as American Imago, ISLE, and SubStance. She is the author of the book Science and Affect in Contemporary Literature: Bodies of Knowledge (Bloomsbury 2024).

  • 2024. Science and Affect in Contemporary Literature: Bodies of Knowledge, Bloomsbury Press.

    2023. With Marco Caracciolo: “The Scientific Lab: Sacrifice Zones as Contact Zones.” Textual Practice, vol. 37, no.10, pp.1568-1585.

    2023. With Nathaniel Otjen, Lena M. Schelgel, Hannah Della Bosca, and Blanche Verlie. “Multispecies Grief in the Wake of Megafires.” Edge Effects (Violent Environments), 1 June. https://edgeeffects.net/multispecies-grief-megafires/

    2022. “‘Shadowtime’: Michelle Paver’s Dark Matter and Ghosts of the Anthropocene.” English Text Construction, vol. 15, no.2, pp. 138-155.

    2022. With Marco Caracciolo, Kristin Ferebee, Heidi Toivonen, and Gry Ulstein: “Climate Fiction: A Posthumanist Survey.” Interférences Littéraires, vol. 27, no.2, pp.6-21.

    2022. “Experimental Bodies: Animals, Science, and Collectivity in Contemporary Short-Form Fiction.” Studia UBB Philologia, vol. 67, no. 2, pp. 89-111: 10.24193/subbphilo.2022.2.05.

    2022. “The Stories of Somebodies: Collective Telling, Seeing, and Knowing in Natalya Bekhta’s We-Narratives.” Diegesis, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 80-86: https://www.diegesis.uni-wuppertal.de/index.php/diegesis/article/download/437/622.

    2021. “‘Fingereyeyed’ Description: Laboratory Animals and Transspecies Empathy in VanderMeer and Yanagihara.” SubStance, vol. 50, no. 3 (Issue 156), pp. 74-92: 10:1353/sub.2021.0029.

    2021. “‘Mycorrhizal Multiplicities’: Mapping Collective Agency in Richard Powers’ The Overstory.” In Tracing Nonhuman Agency in 21st Century Literature, ed. Bettina Burger, Yvonne Liebermann, and Judith Rahn, pp. 187-209. Palgrave MacMillan.

    2021. With Marco Caracciolo, Susannah Crockford, and Gry Ulstein: “Phenomenology of Everyday Climate: An Ethnographic Approach to Metaphor, Affect, and the Nonhuman.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. https://doi.org/10.1093/isle/isab006.

    2021. “‘Contractions’: The Individual and Atmospheric in Offill’s Weather.” TERA Journal, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 83-89. https://tera.institute/contractions/.

    2020. “‘Agents of Description: Animals, Affect, and Care in Thalia Field’s Experimental Animals: A Reality Fiction (2016).” Relations, vol. 8, no. 1-2, pp.115-134.

    2020. “Becoming-botanic: Vegetal Affect and Ecological Grief in Levy’s Swimming Home and Kang Han’s The Vegetarian.” In Trees in Literatures and the Arts: Humanarboreal Perspectives in the Anthropocene, ed. Carmen Concilio and Daniela Fargione, pp. 51-70. Lexington Books, Ecocritical Theory and Practice series.

    2020. Review essay: Affective Ecocriticism: Emotion, Embodiment, Environment. Edited by Kyle Bladow and Jennifer Ladino. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018. 343 pp. American Imago, ed. Stef Craps, pp. 223-31.

    2019. “‘Machine Made of Earth’: Lively Automata in Marlowe’s Hero and Leander.” Cahier voor Literatuurwetenschap, Special Issue ‘Tegen de natuur? / Against nature?’ Ed. Sophie Wennerscheid, vol. 11, 2019, pp. 5-26.

    2019. With Marco Caracciolo: “Narrative Bodies and Nonhuman Transformations.” SubStance vol. 48, no. 3, Issue 150, pp. 45-63.

    2019. “‘Subversive Somatology’: Embodied Communication in the Early Modern Stag Hunt.” PUBLIC: Art, Culture, Ideas, vol. 59, pp. 78-87.

    1. "Reproducing Grief: Animal Experimentation, Loss, and Human Bas in Yaa Gyasi's Transcendent Kingdom." ShARC Tales Conference, University of Sheffield, May 16-17.

    1. "Webs of Affect: Citizen Science, Narrative, and the Joy of Discovery." Panel: Narrative and the Public Faces of Science, International Society for the Study of Narrative, April 17-19.

    1. "Webs of Affect: Citizen Science, Narrative, and the Joy of Discovery in the Short Stories of Andrea Barrett." International Conference of the Three Societies of Literature and Science, University of Birmingham, April 10-13.

    1. “‘Stuck in the Mud’: Friction, Microbial Networks, and Citizen Science in Susan M. Gaines’ Accidentals (2020).” Microscopic Imaginaries in 20th- and 21st-Century Literature, Institut Universitaire de France and the Sorbonne, Paris, 24 November.

    1. “Ethics, Experimentation, and Containment in Hanya Yanagihara’s The People in the Trees.” The European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (EACLALS) Triennial Conference, Imagining Environmental Justice in a Postcolonial World, Paris, 6-10 June.

    1. “Fictions of Bio-Messiness: Animal Models and Forms in Keyes’ Flowers of Algernon and Fowler’s ‘Us,’” The British Society for Literature and Science, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, 13-15 April.

    1. “Experimental Animals: Science, Form, and Hybridity in Contemporary ‘Lab Lit.’” Guest Lecture, English, Creative Writing, and Film Studies 2023 Research Seminars, the University of Adelaide, Adelaide, 3 March.

    1. “Collaborating with Trees.” Invited response for Richard Grusin’s talk ‘Arboreal Infrastructures,’ Ghent University, 27 March.

    1. “Care Bears: Symbols, Spectacles, and Affective Entanglement in Tawada’s Memoirs of a Polar Bear.” Nature Feelz conference, the Sydney Environmental Institute, the University of Sydney, 6-7 December.

    1. “Experiments with Dingo Thought: Poetic Fragments and Human-Animal Cognition in The Animals in That Country.” ACLA conference, online.

    1. “Naturalistic Descriptions and Artificial Fictions: Animals in Laboratory Literature.” International Society for the Study of Narrative (ISSN) Annual Conference, New Orleans, USA.

    2020. “Agents of Description.” Towards an Understanding of Nonhuman Minds: From Animal to Artificial Agency Workshop, University of Zurich, June 24-25 and December 4, online.

    1. “Experimenting with Experiments: Science, Narrative, and Bodily Knowledge in Contemporary ‘Lab Lit.’” European Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSAeu) Conference, “Anthropocene(s),” online.

    1. “‘Naturalistic Descriptions and Artificial Fictions’: Animals in Laboratory Literature.” International Postgraduate Workshop on Ecocriticism and Narrative Form, 9-10th Dec, Graduate Center for the Study of Culture, Justus-Liebig Universität, Giessen, Germany.

    1. “Analogical Ecologies: Exploring Corporeality in Scientific Narratives.” International Society for the Study of Narrative (ISSN) Annual Conference, Universidad de Navarre, Pamplona.

    1. “‘Naturalistic Descriptions and Artificial Fictions’: Animals in Laboratory Literature.” Summer Course in Narrative Study (SINS), Aarhus University, Denmark.

    1. “Mycorrhizal Multiplicities: Mapping Collective Organisation in Richard Powers’ The Overstory.” Conference “Trees in/and/around Literature,” University of Turin.

    1. “Bodies of Knowledge: Representing Humans and Animals in Laboratory Literature.” LUCAS Graduate Conference, “Animals, Theory, Practice, and Representations,” Leiden University.

    1. “Mycorrhizal Multiplicities: Mapping Collective Agency in Richard Powers’ The Overstory.” Graduate Student Conference, “Tracing Non-Human Agency in Literatures in English,” Heinrich Heine Universität, Dusseldorf.

    1. “Slow Stories: Affective Experience in Plant Narratives.” International Society for the Study of Narrative (ISSN) Annual Conference, McGill University, CA.

    1. “Narrating the Mesh: Formal Solutions to Anthropocentric Challenges” (co-authored and presented), conference “Confronting Narratives of the Anthropocene,” University of Tampere.

    1. “Bagpipes and Bees: Becoming-Drone in Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece.” ANZAMEMZ Biennial Conference, University of Queensland.

    1. “An Unbearable Sight: Early Modern Bear-Baiting and Becoming Animal.” ASLE-UKI conference, “Reading Animals,” University of Sheffield.

  • Interviews:

    2022. “Accidentals: An Interview with Susan M. Gaines.” NARMESH Project, Ghent University.

    2021. “Personhood: An Interview with Thalia Field.” NARMESH Project, online.

    Talks:

    2020. Talk on Richard Powers’ The Overstory for Ghent Institute of Classical Studies event “Listen. There’s something you need to hear,” online.

    Field Notes:

    2017. “A Day at the Helsinki Zoo.” NARMESH website. https://narmesh.ugent.be/blog.html