Benjamin recently received his Ph.D. in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo.  His previous degrees include an MA in English at Montclair State University and a BA in Literature and Communications at Pace University. In 2006-08, he was a Marion L. Brittain Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture.

Teaching Interests

American literature, culture, and politics; media and technology studies; critical theory; science fiction; intellectual property law.




Current Courses


 HUMN 2100: Arts, Culture, Media (fall 208)

Recent Articles

“‘To do’: An Ethology of Coded Society.” (under review)

“Modern and Monster: What We Have Never Been and the Concept of Wonder.” (under review)

“Some matching strangeness”: Politics, Paradox, and the Embrace of History in Kindred.” (under review)

“Mashing-up the Past, Critiquing the Present, Wrecking the Future:  The Kleptones’ A Night at the Hip-Hopera.” (under review)

 “On Moral Science: The Problematic Politics of Stuart Kauffman’s Order.” Configurations 12.2 (Spring 2004): 287 – 312.

Recent Conferences & Guest Lectures

“Corruption and Sameness in the Twenty-First-Century Oil Narrative.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention. San Francisco. December 2008.

“Composing the Illegible.” The Seventh Bienniel Thomas R. Watson Conference. University of Louisville, Kentucky. October 2008.

“Democracy, Access, and Constraint: Making Property of the Past.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention. Chicago. December 2007.

“The Declaration of Future Democracy.” Modern Language Association, Annual Convention. Chicago. December 2007.

“Second Nature and/in the Networked Society or, Cultural Production’s Limiting Present.” Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, Annual Meeting. Portland. November 2007.

“Architecture and Control: ‘Natural’ Constraints on Cultural Production in the Networked Society.” MiT5: Creativity, Ownership, and Collaboration in the Digital Age. Cambridge. April 2007.

“Rip. Mix. Burn. Become. Mash-ups vs. Objects.” Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, Annual Meeting. Chicago. November 2005.

“Special Affects: Posthuman Ethics in the Matrix Trilogy.” Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, Annual Meeting. Durham, North Carolina. October 2004.

“Haptic History in Octavia Butler’s Kindred.” Society for Literature and Science, Annual Meeting. Austin. October 2003.

“Poisonous Ethics.” Society in the Age of Intelligent Machines Conference. State University of New York, College at Buffalo. April 2003 (invited lecture).

“Cultural Bodies, Natural Minds: Wonder and the Ethics of the Posthuman.” American Comparative Literature Association, Annual Meeting. California State University, San Marcos. April 2003.

“Mass Production and Modernity’s Crisis of Disembodiment: Nathanael West’s Day of the Locust.” Twentieth-Century Literature Conference. University of Louisville, Kentucky. February 2003.