Dan Burns

“Collaboration Across Demarcation: Outsider Theory in Rodney Ascher’s Room 237.” The LFA/AAS Online Conference. Literature/Film Association and the Association of Adaptation Studies, February 2026.

“‘An Immense Spiritual Dread of Space’: The Meaning of Miniaturism in Ari Aster’s Hereditary.” Literature/Film Association (LFA). Georgia Southern University, Savannah, GA, September 2025.

“Queer Kinship and the ‘Unfamilied Child’ in Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers.” Adaptation and Aging. The LFA/AAS Online Conference. Literature/Film Association and the Association of Adaptation Studies. February 2025.

“Beyond Empathy in the Civil Rights Biopic: The 'Thick Solidarity' of Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah.” Literature/Film Association (LFA). York College of Pennsylvania, York, PA, September 2024.

“‘…this door was intended only for you…’: Spectatorial Subjectivity in Orson Welles’ The Trial.” Writerly Worlds and Worldly Writers: Transcultural Receptions of German Writers. American Comparative Literature Association Conference (ACLA). Palais des congrès de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada, March 2024. Invited.

“Seriality and Sustain: The Resistance to ‘Assigned Streaming’ in a Binge-worthy Era.” Co-presented with Kai Swanson. Adapting in and Out of the Classroom. The LFA/AAS Online Conference. Literature/Film Association and the Association of Adaptation Studies, February 2024.

Mapping the Maximalist Novel, Roundtable Discussion, Modern Language Association Annual Convention (MLA). Philadelphia, PA, January 2024. Invited.

“Direction as Data Extraction: Surveilling Behavioral Surplus in Joseph Kosinski's Spiderhead.” Co-presented with Kai Swanson. Literature/Film Association Conference (LFA). University of Montana, Missoula, Montana, September 2023. 

“Cross-Disciplinary Strategies for Engaged Learning: Partnering Language and Visual Tools for Course Design.” Elon Teaching and Learning Conference, Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL), Elon University, Elon, NC, June 2023.

“Too Big to Fail: Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life and the Art of Excess in the Age of Inclusion.” Twenty-First-Century Forms, Special Session, Modern Language Association (MLA). San Francisco, CA, January 2023.

“Voice v. Vision: The Reception History of Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk.” Co-presented with Christina Stafford. Only Connect: A Joint Virtual Conference of the Literature/Film Association and the Association of Adaptation Studies, February 2022.

“’Mock-Scholarship’ and the Research Space of Possible Queer Worlds in Delany’s The Mad Man.” The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States Conference (MELUS). University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, March 2019.

“Reassessing Information Literacy: Methods and Findings from a Collaborative Assessment of College Writers’ Source Use.” Co-presented with Paula Patch, Patrick Rudd, Teresa LePors and Li Li. International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference (IWAC). Auburn University, Auburn, AL, June 2018.

“Secret History as Subterraneity: Excavating Chris Abani’s Las Vegas.” The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States Conference (MELUS). University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV. May 2018. 

“Toward a Mestiza Modernism: Multi-Ethnic Canon Formation and the Borderland Discourses of Gayl Jones’s Mosquito.” The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States Conference (MELUS). College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, March 2016.

“American Genizah: Maximalist Poetics and the End of Literary Canon Formation in Joshua Cohen’s Witz.” Modern Language Association (MLA). Chicago, IL, January 2014.

“The Premediated Manifesto.” Modern Language Association (MLA). Chicago, IL, January 2014.

“Immersion Aesthetics at 2 fps: The Paratextual Psycho in Don DeLillo’s Point Omega.” Society for Comparative Literature and the Arts (SCLA). Guilford College, Greensboro, NC, October 2013.

“Topography, Topology, Totality: Narrativizing Scale in the Novels of Joseph McElroy.” American Comparative Literature Association Conference (ACLA). University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, April 2013.

“Voice at National Volume in George Saunders’s In Persuasion Nation.” Midwest Modern Language Association (MMLA). University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, November 2012.

“Rhetorics of Puer and Senex in A Clockwork Orange.” Association of Adaptation Studies Conference. British Film Institute, London, England, September 2009.

“‘The Isolationist’: Theme as Structural Principle in the Adaptations of Todd Field.” Association of Literature on Screen Conference, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands, September 2008.

“Self-Consuming Artifice: Public Discourse in Joe Orton’s Britain.” Northeast Modern Language Association, The John Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, March 2007.

“Differential Dramaturgies in Joe Orton’s The Complete Plays and ‘The Wolfenden Report of the Departmental Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution’ (1954-1967).” Northeast Modern Language Association, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, March 2006.

Chaired Conference Panels

“Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon: Recovery and Reception.” (Co-chair and panel organizer.) The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States Conference (MELUS), University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, March 2019.

“David Lynch’s Hollywood.” (Chair and panel organizer). Northeast Modern Language Association, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, April 2008.

“Joe Orton and the New Queer Historicism.” (Chair and panel organizer). Northeast Modern Language Association, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, March 2007.