Skyler David Hodell

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Advisor: Melina Pappademos

Research Interests:

18th- and 19th-century trans-Atlantic cultural exchange, continental European philosophy post-Hegel, architecture and literature between the Caribbean/Latin America and the Orient, “nihilism,” philosophical pessimism, and critique of political economy; psychoanalysis and post-WWII decolonization, “animal/vegetable” dichotomies and history of nutrition.

Biography: 

“Half-hailing” from the Washington, DC metropolitan area, Skyler grew up internationally, completing K-12 at schools in the Persian Gulf, Horn of Africa, and East Asia. “Returning” to the United States for undergraduate studies, Skyler received a bachelor’s degree in history from George Mason University in Virginia.

In his research, Skyler has sought to better complicate the mapping of memory when refracted by concerns with sound and media, as well as by questions of class and environment. Shaped by his upbringing, his research is especially framed by an acknowledgment of transnational and diasporic subjectivities.

Bridging disparate interests in ethnofiction and ecocriticism, Skyler keeps writing-editing and audio practices; he has published in ars technica, Dissent Magazine and has produced audio for Montez Press.

Education:

B.A., History, George Mason University

Publications:

“A River Runs Through It: The Anacostia and Residential Displacement in Postwar Southeast DC,” The Metropole: Urban History Association, April 2024.

“Con City,” Dissent Magazine, Fall 2022.

Review of Dwight Cassin’s Oronsay, Brooklyn Rail, April 2022.

Review of George Petrides’s Hellenic Heads, Brooklyn Rail, June 2022.

Selected Honors:

Hugh M. Hamil Graduate Fellowship in Latin American History, University of Connecticut, 2024.

History and Art History Department Thesis Award, “‘Down for the Ones’: Solidarity, Song, and American Action for Black South Africa, 1981 – 1992,” George Mason University