Talks & Conferences
Talks marked video have recordings online.
Invited talks
- Jan. 2026“Machinist on the Moon: The Dreams of Space Age Labor Relations and How They Failed,” NASA History Office
- Apr. 2025“Machinists on the Moon,” Kluge Center, Library of Congress
- Sep. 2024“The Space Age on Strike,” Georgia State University Special Collections video
- Jan. 2019“The ‘Time of Storms’: New York Yiddish Anarchists from Kishinev to the 1905 Revolution,” Yiddish Anarchism: New Scholarship on a Forgotten Tradition, YIVO video
- Nov. 2018“Forward to the Future: Science and Science Fiction in the US and USSR,” Open Society Archivum
Conference presentations
- Oct. 2026“Machinists on the Moon: The Hopes and Anxieties of the Space Age Worker,” Society for Social Studies of Science, Toronto
- Sep. 2026“Totalitarian Envy: How American Planners Copied Soviet Modernity,” Socialist Techno-Optimism and Governance of Economic Development, 1955–1991, Slavic Research Center, Sapporo
- Jul. 2026“From Social Discipline to Economic Discipline: Scientific Imperatives in American Bioastronautics,” History of Science Society, Edinburgh
- Jan. 2026“Machinist on the Moon: The Hope and Anxieties of the Space Age Worker,” in “Foreign Policy and Organized Labor During the Cold War,” American Historical Association, Chicago
- Nov. 2025Chair, “Left Perspectives on Method III: Neoliberal/Cultural Turn in Histories of Socialism,” ASEEES, Washington, DC
- Apr. 2025“The Rise and Fall of the Space Age: The Value of Technological Development and the Shape of the Future in American Capitalism and Soviet Communism,” Political Economy and Cultural Forms Conference, Jordan Center, NYU
- Feb. 2025“Machinists on the Moon: The Anxieties and Hopes of the Space Age Worker,” Cyborg Workers 2.0, European Trade Union Institute, Brussels video
- Dec. 2024“Machinists on the Moon: Unions, the Apollo Program, and the Failure of Space Age Labor Relations,” Space Perceptions and Realities, UNIVERSEH, University of Toulouse video
- Aug. 2024“Rocket City 1962: The Space Age as Suburban Utopia,” in “Touching the Void: Tactile Geographies of Spaceports and New Space,” Royal Geographical Society, London
- Jan. 2024“Spy Satellites,” in “Senses & Assemblages,” Ensnaring Entanglements, U-M Science, Technology, and Society Symposium
- Nov. 2023“Ideologies, Bodies, and Machines: Capitalism and Socialism Encounter in Early Bioastronautics,” in “Socialism or Barbarism II: Socialism and Science,” ASEEES
- Nov. 2023“Planning for Collapse: NASA, Futurology, and the Loss of the Long-Term in the Apollo Era,” State Planning and Private Entrepreneurship in the 20th Century, Princeton Julis-Rabinowitz Center
- Oct. 2023“Planning for Progress: NASA, Futurology, and the Loss of the Long-Term in the Apollo Era,” Graduate Research in STS Conference (GRISTS), Harvard Kennedy School
- Oct. 2021“Future without Limits, Colonialism without Guilt: The L5 Society and the Dreams of Utopian Space Capitalism,” Intentional Communities: Real Utopias in History, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
- Jun. 2019“The Storm of Revolution: Jewish Anarchists in New York City and the 1905 Russian Revolution,” Global Labor Migration Network Conference, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam
- Mar. 2019“Reconciling the Space Race and Space Age: Soviet and American Imaginations of the Future,” 2nd Science Fiction and Communism Conference, American University in Bulgaria
Academic organizing
- 2026Coordinator, “Against Stagnation: Reform and Flexibility in Late Socialism,” Black Sheep Society (Zoom panel)
- 2025Coordinator, Black Sheep Society Symposium III: “Remembering Revisionism” with Sheila Fitzpatrick, Anna Krylova, Ronald Suny, and Lewis Siegelbaum video
- 2024Co-coordinator, “Learning from the Wise: Black Sheep Symposium II” video
- 2024Co-coordinator, “Black Sheep Society Symposium I: The Necessity of the Black Sheep” video
- 2024Co-coordinator, “Ensnaring Entanglements,” University of Michigan STS Symposium
- 2023Organizer, panel “Socialism or Barbarism II: Socialism and Science,” ASEEES
- 2023Co-organizer, “Insurgents and Intellectuals: Thought and Practice on the Left in US History,” U-M History Department
- 2023Co-organizer, The Movement of Labor: Migration, Racialization, and Class Struggle on Europe’s Southeastern Periphery, LeftEast and Solidarity Network, Tbilisi
- 2022Assistant, “A Hit Parade of Historical Turns: From a Russian Perspective”