Tom Nurmi
About
Background
I am Associate Professor of English Literature and Culture in the Department of Teacher Education, where I teach world literatures in English for the integrated five-year Masters in Teacher Education program and other continuing education programs.
I hold a Ph.D. in English from the University of Arizona, USA (2012), and I joined the NTNU faculty in 2021 after teaching for many years in the Department of English, Philosophy and Modern Languages at Montana State University Billings, USA. There I was Associate Professor of English and affiliated faculty with the Native American and Environmental Studies programs (2014-2021).
Research
My research field is the environmental humanities. My work examines the intersections of literature and environmental science in nineteenth-century America and the broader Atlantic world, particularly how developments in life and earth sciences altered the trajectory of US literary history. My first book, Magnificent Decay: Melville and Ecology (University of Virginia Press, 2020), was shortlisted for the 2020 British Society for Literature and Science Book Prize, and my ongoing research traces the disciplinary barriers between humanities scholars and biological, physical, and materials scientists to explore points of contact across multiple discourses, histories, and practices of knowledge.
I'm also interested in geospatial approaches to literature, law and literature, and the relationship between literature and philosophy. My earlier work looked at the history of American slavery and the legal geographies of settler colonialism, and I co-edited the anthology Melville Among the Philosophers, (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), featuring an afterword by Cornel West.
My current project – a three-book trilogy – situates the science, technological history, and cultural figurations of energy in a broadly comparative frame. The first volume, Waylaid Light: The Physics of American Literature, highlights representations of energy in nineteenth-century U.S. literatures alongside the development of modern physics, roughly 1850-1900. The second, Every Atom Weeps: Energy, Race, and Resistance in the Federal Theater, is a collection of three unpublished plays by Black writers of the Federal Theatre Project (1935-39) with an extended introduction that contextualizes the plays within the afterlives of slavery and the expansion of extractive industries like coal, oil, and turpentine in the late nineteenth- and early-twentieth centuries. The final volume, Uranium Cadillac: Energy Imperialism and the Work of Indigenous Literatures considers how various twentieth-century indigenous North American writers (e.g., Silko, Ortiz, Alexie, and Harjo) articulated and resisted energy imperialism in the American West, 1960-2000.
NTNU Research Groups
Environmental Humanities
ScienceHumanities
Indigenous Topics in Education
North American Studies
Children's Literature Education and Research
Technology in Education
Teaching
Fall 2024
ENG 6024 - Literature and culture in the classroom (8-13)
MGLU 2505 - English 1 (5-10) Subject 2
MGLU 5206 - Methodology and English Didactics
PLU8013 - Theoretical Frameworks and Ethics in Educational Research
Spring 2024
LVUT 8005 - English 1 (1-7) Subject 2 KFK
MGLU 1505 - English 1 (5-10) Subject 1
Publications
Books
Magnificent Decay: Melville and Ecology. Under the Sign of Nature: Explorations in Ecocriticism Series. University of Virginia Press, 2020.
Reviewed in Choice Reviews (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2021), Nineteenth-Century Contexts (Taylor & Francis, 2022), Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022), and Nineteenth-Century Literature (University of California Press, 2023).
Melville Among the Philosophers. Ed. with Corey McCall. Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.
Book Chapters
“Melville and Reproduction,” The Routledge Companion to Herman Melville, Eds. Cody Marrs & Brian Yothers (London: Routledge, Forthcoming 2025).
"Barnacle Theory." In Melville Extracted, Eds. Cécile Roudeau, Michael Jonik, and Thomas Constantinesco. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, Forthcoming 2025.
“Melville’s Foams.” In The Oxford Handbook of Herman Melville. Eds. Michael Jonik and Jennifer Greiman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Forthcoming 2025.
“Verdure.” In A New Companion to Herman Melville, 2nd Ed. Eds. Wyn Kelley and Christopher Ohge. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2022.
“Shackle, Sycamore, Shibboleth: Material Geographies of the Underground Railroad.” In Cartographies of Exile: A New Spatial Literacy. Ed. Karen Elizabeth Bishop. Routledge, 2016: 111-132.
“Wallace’s Choice.” In The Wire in the College Classroom: Pedagogical Approaches to the Humanities. McFarland Press, 2015: 160-178.
“The Detective Reader: Force and Form in Poetry,” Student’s Guide for First-Year Writers, eds. Haley-Brown, Lee & Rodriguez (Hayden-McNeil, 2011): 81-88.
Articles
"Cinema and the Infrastructures of Necroplasticity: Sicario." Film-Philosophy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, Forthcoming 2025.
“Mineral Melville.” J19: Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists 7.1 (2019): 155-83.
“Shadows in the Shenandoah: Melville, Slavery, and the Elegiac Landscape.” Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies 17:3 (2015): 7-24.
Reprinted in Mickle Street Review: An Electronic Journal of Whitman and American Studies 21 (2016).
“Stranger in Japan.” Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies 18:1 (2016): 128-130.
“Body/Land: Notes on the State of Virginia and the Rhetoric of Possession.” Polymath: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Arts and Sciences 3:1 (2012): 97-111.
“Writing Ojibwe: Politics and Poetics in Longfellow’s Hiawatha.” Journal of American Culture 35:3 (2012): 244-257.
Book Reviews
Melvillean Parasites by Anders M. Gullestad (Cappelen Damm, 2022), Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies 26:1 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024): 88-92.
Rendered Obsolete: Energy Culture and the Afterlife of US Whaling by Jamie L. Jones (University of North Carolina Press, 2023), Transatlantica: revue d’études américaines (French Association for American Studies, 2024).
Research
My research field is the environmental humanities. My work examines the intersections of literature and environmental science in nineteenth-century America and the broader Atlantic world, particularly how developments in life and earth sciences altered the trajectory of US literary history. My first book, Magnificent Decay: Melville and Ecology (University of Virginia Press, 2020), was shortlisted for the 2020 British Society for Literature and Science Book Prize, and my ongoing research traces the disciplinary barriers between humanities scholars and biological, physical, and materials scientists to explore points of contact across multiple discourses, histories, and practices of knowledge.
Publications
2024
-
Nurmi , Tom.
(2024)
Melvillean Parasites by Anders M. Gullestad (review).
Leviathan: a journal of Melville studies
Academic literature review
2022
-
Nurmi , Tom.
(2022)
Verdure.
Wiley-Blackwell
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
2020
-
Nurmi , Tom.
(2020)
Magnificent Decay: Melville and Ecology.
University of Virginia Press
University of Virginia Press
Academic monograph
2017
-
Nurmi , Tom;
McCall, Corey.
(2017)
Melville Among the Philosophers.
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Academic anthology/Conference proceedings
Journal publications
-
Nurmi , Tom.
(2024)
Melvillean Parasites by Anders M. Gullestad (review).
Leviathan: a journal of Melville studies
Academic literature review
Books
-
Nurmi , Tom.
(2020)
Magnificent Decay: Melville and Ecology.
University of Virginia Press
University of Virginia Press
Academic monograph
-
Nurmi , Tom;
McCall, Corey.
(2017)
Melville Among the Philosophers.
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Academic anthology/Conference proceedings
Part of book/report
-
Nurmi , Tom.
(2022)
Verdure.
Wiley-Blackwell
Academic chapter/article/Conference paper
Teaching
Courses
- MGLU2505 - Engelsk 1 (5-10) emne 2
- ENG6024 - Litteratur og kultur i klasserommet
- EH8000 - Topics in Environmental Humanities
- LVUT8086 - Engelsk 2 (5-10) emne 2 KFK
- PLU8013 - Vitenskapsteori og etikk med innretning mot profesjonsforskning
- LVUT8085 - Engelsk 2 (5-10) emne 1 KFK
- MGLU5206 - Metodeemne i engelskdidaktikk
Supervision
Current Supervision
“Developing theoretical and methodological approaches to research marine spaces, international environmental law, and institutions,” (Ph.D., Marine Political Ecology and Governance, 2025), Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Germany.
Recently Completed Supervision
“Utvikling av naturfaglig skjønnlitteratur” [“Development of natural science (through) fiction”]. (M.A., Natural Sciences: Teacher Education, 2024), NTNU, Norway.
“Disney’s Nature: Environment, animation, affect and Project-Based Learning in lower-secondary EAL sducation.” (M.A., English: Teacher Education, 2024), NTNU, Norway.
“Hard to Stop Feeling: Expressive writing, affective engagement, and picture books in the EAL classroom.” (M.A., English: Teacher Education, 2024), NTNU, Norway.
“Seussville: Graphic literature, capitalism, and the production of critical thinking in EAL education.” (M.A., English: Teacher Education, 2024), NTNU, Norway.
“That’s Not Built for You’: Exploring architecture, language and gender as sites of difference in three Disney and Pixar films.” (M.A., English: Teacher Education, 2024), NTNU, Norway.
“The climate crisis through words and images: raising eco-consciousness and discussing global warming through multimodal texts.” (M.A., English: Teacher Education, 2023), NTNU, Norway.
“Graphic novels in the EFL classroom: an alternative approach to the core values.” (M.A., English: Teacher Education, 2022), NTNU, Norway.
“LGBTQ+ representation in tween literature in the EFL classroom.” (M.A., English: Teacher Education, 2022), NTNU, Norway.
Outreach
2024
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Academic lectureNurmi , Tom. (2024) “Dead Leaves Walking: Teaching Jeff VanderMeer in the Norwegian EFL Classroom.” . Growing Futures: Vegetal Encounters in Contemporary Children’s and Young Adult EcoFiction , University of Cologne 2024-04-24 - 2024-04-27
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Academic lectureNurmi , Tom. (2024) Mining Literature and the Afterlives of Extraction. Department of Language and Literature, NTNU Critical Uses of the Past in the Present , Trondheim 2024-06-21 - 2024-06-21
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Academic lectureNurmi , Tom. (2024) Every Atom Weeps: Mining Realism, Black Labor, and the Tools of Empire. Université Paris Cité Energy, Empire, and Extractivism in the Age of Conrad , Paris 2024-05-13 - 2024-05-15
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Academic lectureNurmi , Tom. (2024) Sensitive Androids and Plastic Albatrosses: Teaching Environmental Literature and Film in the Norwegian EFL Classroom. CLEAR: Children’s Literature Education And Research Dagsseminar om Barnelitteratur , Trondheim 2024-05-29 - 2024-05-29
2023
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Popular scientific lectureNurmi , Tom; Ohge, Christopher. (2023) Session Organizer: “Working with the Digital Humanities Climate Coalition Toolkit for Climate Justice,” led by Christopher Ohge (University of London). . NTNU New Technologies and Educational Design Research Group Workshop , Trondheim 2023-09-20 - 2023-09-20
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Academic lectureNurmi , Tom. (2023) “1873.” . Institut Catholique de Paris Environmental Humanities Workshop with Katie Ritson (Carson Center, Munich), Graeme Macdonald (University of Warwick) and Jeff Insko (Oakland University) , Paris 2023-03-23 - 2023-03-23
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Academic lectureNurmi , Tom. (2023) Seminar Organizer: “Energy Narratives.” With Ute Dubois (ISG International Business School), Steve Gary Williams (Chalmers University of Technology), Carolin Slickers (Universität Bonn), Neil Gordon Davey (OsloMet), and Fernanda Guasselli (Aalborg University). Norwegian University of Science and Technology Beyond crisis/Beyond normal: A social science and humanities conference on sustainability. , Trondheim 2023-09-27 - 2023-09-27
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LectureNurmi , Tom. (2023) “Waylaying Light: Emily Dickinson and the Sun.”. Université Paris Cité A19 Seminar , Paris 2023-03-17 - 2023-03-17
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Academic lectureNurmi , Tom. (2023) “Environmental Humanities and Migration Literature in the Norwegian EFL Classroom.” . Université Paris Cité Teaching Environmental Humanities Roundtable with Katie Ritson (Carson Center, Munich), Graeme Macdonald (University of Warwick) and Jeff Insko (Oakland University) , Paris 2023-03-22 - 2023-03-22
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Popular scientific lectureKovach, Margaret; Cariou, Warren; Utsi, Mai Britt; Garcia Zarranz, Libe; Murray, Helen Margaret; Stokke, Ruth Seierstad. (2023) Indigenous Pedagogies & Methodologies: A Seminar with Mai Britt Utsi, Margaret Kovach, and Warren Cariou. Indigenous Topics in Education, NTNU; Collaboration Oslo Met Indigenous Topics in Education Online Seminar , Online 2023-02-09 - 2023-02-09
2022
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Academic lectureNurmi , Tom. (2022) “Loose Fish: Property, Translation, and Literature at Sea.” . Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity Equity Perspectives on Global Ocean Law and Governance , Hamburg 2022-09-06 - 2022-09-06
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Academic lectureNurmi , Tom. (2022) “Foamy Grammar: Writing Waves in 19th C. American Literature and Science.” . Nord University American Studies Association of Norway Conference , Bodø 2022-09-30 - 2022-09-30
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Academic lectureEdgar, Eir-Anne; Nurmi Jr, Thomas David; Hanssen, Jessica Allen; Erdmann, Susan Lynn. (2022) Rough Waters and Smooth Sailing: A Roundtable Discussion on Teaching American Studies in Norway. ASANOR/ Nord Universitet ASANOR 2022 , Bodø 2022-09-29 - 2022-11-01
2021
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LectureNurmi , Tom. (2021) “Melville’s Foams: Reading in the Margins of Environmental Literature.”. Université Paris Cité LARCA Research Group Environmental Humanities Seminar , Paris 2021-12-09 - 2021-12-09