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 The second, Every Atom Weeps: Energy, Race, and Resistance in the Federal Theater, is a collection of three unpublished plays by Black writers of the Federal Theatre Project (1935-39) with an extended introduction that contextualizes the plays within the afterlives of slavery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 2026
ENG6024 - Literature and Culture in the Classroom (8-13)
LOS8043 - Exploratory and Aesthetic Forms of Learning in Literary Education
PLU8013 - Theoretical Frameworks and Ethics in Educational Research
Spring 2026
LVUT8005 - English 1 Module 1 (1-7)
PLU8013 - Theoretical Frameworks and Ethics in Educational Research
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 2026).
"Barnacle Theory." In Melville Extracted, Eds. Cécile Roudeau, Michael Jonik, and Thomas Constantinesco. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, Forthcoming 2026.
“Melville’s Foams.” In The Oxford Handbook of Herman Melville. Eds. Michael Jonik and Jennifer Greiman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025: 440-457.
“Verdure.” In A New Companion to Herman Melville, 2nd Ed. Eds. Wyn Kelley and Christopher Ohge. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2022: 460-471.
“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
"Sicario and the Cinematic Infrastructures of Necroplasticity." Film-Philosophy 29:3 (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
2025
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Nurmi, Tom.
(2025)
Melville’s Foams.
Academic chapter
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Nurmi, Tom.
(2025)
Sicario and the Cinematic Infrastructures of Necroplasticity.
Film-Philosophy
Academic article
2024
-
Nurmi, Tom.
(2024)
Jamie L. Jones, Rendered Obsolete: Energy Culture and the Afterlife of US Whaling.
Transatlantica: revue d’études américaines
Academic literature review
-
Nurmi, Tom.
(2024)
Melvillean Parasites by Anders M. Gullestad (review).
Leviathan: a journal of Melville studies
Academic literature review
2022
-
Nurmi, Tom.
(2022)
Verdure.
Academic chapter
2020
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Nurmi, Tom.
(2020)
Magnificent Decay: Melville and Ecology.
University of Virginia Press
Academic monograph
2017
-
Nurmi, Tom;
McCall, Corey.
(2017)
Melville Among the Philosophers.
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Anthology
Journal publications
-
Nurmi, Tom.
(2025)
Sicario and the Cinematic Infrastructures of Necroplasticity.
Film-Philosophy
Academic article
-
Nurmi, Tom.
(2024)
Jamie L. Jones, Rendered Obsolete: Energy Culture and the Afterlife of US Whaling.
Transatlantica: revue d’études américaines
Academic literature review
-
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
Academic monograph
-
Nurmi, Tom;
McCall, Corey.
(2017)
Melville Among the Philosophers.
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Anthology
Part of book/report
-
Nurmi, Tom.
(2025)
Melville’s Foams.
Academic chapter
-
Nurmi, Tom.
(2022)
Verdure.
Academic chapter
Teaching
Courses
- ENG6024 - Literature and Culture in the Classroom
- LOS8043 - Exploratory and aesthetic forms of learning in literary education
- EH8000 - Topics in Environmental Humanities
- PLU8013 - Theoretical frameworks and ethics in educational research
Supervision
Current Supervision
Hairenik Aramayo, “Critical Digital Literacy Skills for the (Mis)Information Society: How Environmental Experts and Novices Read AI and Human-Written Texts.” (Ph.D., Education: Teacher Education, 2028), NTNU, Norway.
Recently Completed Supervision
“When Memory Fades: A Study of Multimodal Representations of Grief, Loss and Death in the Norwegian EAL Classroom.” (M.A., English: Teacher Education, 2026), NTNU, Norway.
“From Treasure to Trash: Visual Film Analysis and Theme-Based Learning in Toy Story.” (M.A., English: Teacher Education, 2026), NTNU, Norway.
“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.
“From Global Crisis to Personal Action: Exploring Different Pedagogical Approaches to Teaching About Environmental Issues in the EAL Classroom.” (M.A., English: Teacher Education, 2025), NTNU, Norway.
“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
2025
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Lecture
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Conference lectureNurmi, Tom. (2025) Environmental Humanities and AI. “A Climate-Changed University? Towards New Practices and Epistemologies” Panel
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Conference lectureNurmi, Tom. (2025) "Environmental Humanities and Migration Studies: Curricular Integration Notes from Norway". Guest Lecture
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Conference lecture
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Conference lecture
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Conference lectureNurmi, Tom. (2025) "Melville and Infrastructure" (Panel Chair, Panelist). 14th International Melville Society Conference
2024
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Conference lectureNurmi, Tom. (2024) “Uranium Cadillac: Nuclear Form and Native American Literatures, 1973-1993.”. The Nuclear Age, Redux: Forms and Modes of Environmental Change Conference
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Conference 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
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Conference lectureNurmi, Tom. (2024) Every Atom Weeps: Mining Realism, Black Labor, and the Tools of Empire. Energy, Empire, and Extractivism in the Age of Conrad
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Conference lectureNurmi, Tom. (2024) Mining Literature and the Afterlives of Extraction. Critical Uses of the Past in the Present
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Conference lectureNurmi, Tom. (2024) Sensitive Androids and Plastic Albatrosses: Teaching Environmental Literature and Film in the Norwegian EFL Classroom. Dagsseminar om Barnelitteratur
2023
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Conference lectureNurmi, Tom. (2023) “1873.”. Environmental Humanities Workshop with Katie Ritson (Carson Center, Munich), Graeme Macdonald (University of Warwick) and Jeff Insko (Oakland University)
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Conference 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). Beyond crisis/Beyond normal: A social science and humanities conference on sustainability.
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LectureKovach, Margaret; Cariou, Warren; Utsi, Mai Britt; Garcia Zarranz, Libe; Murray, Helen Margaret; Stokke, Ruth Seierstad; Nurmi, Tom. (2023) Indigenous Pedagogies & Methodologies: A Seminar with Mai Britt Utsi, Margaret Kovach, and Warren Cariou. Indigenous Topics in Education Online Seminar
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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). New Technologies and Educational Design Research Group Workshop
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Conference lectureNurmi, Tom. (2023) “Environmental Humanities and Migration Literature in the Norwegian EFL Classroom.”. Teaching Environmental Humanities Roundtable with Katie Ritson (Carson Center, Munich), Graeme Macdonald (University of Warwick) and Jeff Insko (Oakland University)
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Lecture
2022
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Conference lectureNurmi, Tom. (2022) “Loose Fish: Property, Translation, and Literature at Sea.”. Equity Perspectives on Global Ocean Law and Governance
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Conference 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 2022
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Conference lectureNurmi, Tom. (2022) “Foamy Grammar: Writing Waves in 19th C. American Literature and Science.”. American Studies Association of Norway Conference
2021
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LectureNurmi, Tom. (2021) “Melville’s Foams: Reading in the Margins of Environmental Literature.”. LARCA Research Group Environmental Humanities Seminar