J.D. Porter specializes in text mining, American literature, and the intersection of literature and philosophy. His digital work often involves natural language processing, network analysis, and creative data visualization. His literary work typically focuses on literary reception, especially models of canonicity. His more philosophical work is generally about philosophy of language as well as the metaphysics of fictional things. His work has appeared in PMLA, Synthese, Episteme, Cultural Analytics, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Books, the pamphlet series of the Stanford Literary Lab, and the edited volumes Ralph Ellison in Context and The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story. He received his PhD from Stanford University in 2017.