Americanist Colloquium: Maeva O’Brien

Catch / Ash / Catch / Moon: US Nuclear Imperialism and Mythmaking as Survival Technique in Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner’s “Fishbone Hair”

Maeva O’Brien is a PhD Candidate in English specializing in post-1945 American literature; the environmental humanities; and postcolonial, narrative, and nuclear studies. Her dissertation theorizes ambient, durative nuclear apocalypse as a condition of contemporary life. It studies the impact of such apocalypse on narrative form and articulates aesthetic strategies for sustaining marginalized human life in a damaged and damaging world.