Scholarship

Awards

David G. Hartwell Emerging Scholar Award, International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, 2024

Articles

“‘The Beauty of the House is Immeasurable’: Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi on the Uses of Speculative Fiction for Escape during the Covid Pandemic,” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, forthcoming

“The Most Mormon Magic System: How Brandon Sanderson Turned Agency into Fantasy,” SFRA Review, vol 51, no 3, 2021

“Going Mainstream: Chaim Potok as a Model for Mormon Literature,” Irreantum, Association for Mormon Letters, Volume 9, No. 2, 2007, p 144

Conference Presentations

“‘We Helped Create the Whole Thing’: Dystopia and Latter-day Saint Premortal Theology in The Maze Runner and Matched,” Virtual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (VICFA), October 2024

“‘Withheld Recollections’: Memory Erasure and Agency in Latter-day Saint YA Dystopias,” Association for Mormon Letters Conference, July 2024

“Embracing and Revising Latter-day Stereotypes in Speculative Fiction: The Mormon Image in The Expanse and Stranger Things,” Mormon History Association, June 2024

“‘The Beauty of the House is Immeasurable’: Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi on the Uses of Speculative Fiction for Escape during the Covid Pandemic,” International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts, 2024

“The Evolution of Stereotypes in Genre Fiction: Learning from Modern Portrayals of Latter-day Saints in The Expanse and Stranger Things,” Latter-day Saints & Media Studies Symposium 2023, second place student paper award

“One Great Whole: An Exploration of the Alien as the Self in Mormon Science Fiction,” Association for Mormon Letters Conference 2023 (timestamp 2:40-24:05)

“Confronting Colonialism Through Magic: Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive as a Reflection of Mormon Colonialism,” Mormon History Association Conference 2022

“Magic & Mormons, Saints & Starships,” Association for Mormon Letters Conference 2021 (timestamp 26:50-34:40)

Public Scholarship

“Latent Mormonism or Explicit Representation in Speculative Fiction: Some Thoughts,” Dawning of a Brighter Day, blog of the Association for Mormon Letters, 2023

“Five Stages to Acceptance of the Brandon Sanderson Wired Article,” Dawning of a Brighter Day, blog of the Association for Mormon Letters, 2023

“Mormon Horror: An Incomplete Guide of Where to Find It“, Dawning of a Brighter Day, blog of the Association for Mormon Letters, 2022

“The Ordinary Saint’s Guide to Under the Banner of Heaven“, Public Square Magazine, 2022 (Author’s Note)

“A First Attempt at a Mormon Podcast Directory,” Dawning of a Brighter Day, blog of the Association for Mormon Letters, 2022

Five-part series on the history of Mormons and speculative fiction for Dawning of a Brighter Day, the Association for Mormon Letters blog, 2020:

  1. Early Mormon Speculative Fiction: Religion and World Building
  2. The Foundations of Mormon Speculative Fiction: Pulps, Orson Scott Card, and the Class that Wouldn’t Die
  3. Mormons & Starships: Why So Many Mormons in Science Fiction?
  4. Speculative Fiction in Conversation with Mormonism: Ideas for Future Study
  5. Research Resources for Writing about Mormons and Science Fiction/Fantasy

Interview on Writers of the Future Podcast: Episode #93: Liz Busby discusses the value of SFF to address religious issues

Book Reviews

“Writing from the Inside: A Review of And All Eternity Shook by Jacob Bender and The History of Honey Spring by Daren Cozzens,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol 57.2, 2024

“A Freakonomics Spin on Apologetics in Favor of Modern Irrationality: Review of Terryl Givens and Nathaniel Givens, Into the Headwinds: Why Belief Has Always Been Hard–And Still Is,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol 57.1, 2024

For the Association for Mormon Letters: