Teaching Experience
To be human is to be a learner and a teacher. The legacy of a loving and meaningful life is the wisdom, creativity, understanding, empowerment, and vision you awaken and impart, regardless of your vocation or role. Concentrated learning at the university is a small part this larger tapestry. Success here requires the same qualities inherent in all learning: humility, openness, faith, and cooperation on the part of students and mentors alike. I strive to model and magnify those qualities.
Research
My primary research area is nineteenth-century American literature and philosophy. I’ve published on literary figures like Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe, as well as on intellectual and aesthetic developments like romanticism, transcendental philosophy, and modernism.
Selected Publications
- Recovering the New: Transatlantic Roots of Modernism. University Press of New England, 2003.
- “Romanticism.” Walt Whitman in Context. Eds Joanna Levin & Edward Whitley. Cambridge UP (2018): 327-337
- “Literary Modernity and the Problem of a National Literature: Understanding William Dean Howells’ Critique of Walt Whitman.” American Literary Realism 38.2 (Winter 2006): 132-144
Service
I’ve been a department chair, a graduate coordinator, and a member of various department, college and university committees. Universities are dynamic systems, always evolving, and service is a way to share institutional knowledge, build consensus, and make modifications that promote the general health of the organization and learning environment.
Citizenship assignments
Department chair, English. 2006-12 Graduate coordinator, English MA & MFA. 2015-2019 Humanities Center Executive Committee. 2013-2018 Associate Editor, Literature and Belief. 2005; 2020-present
ENGL 293 TTh 9:30-10:45 a.m. 4116 JFSB
ENGL 361 TTh 12:05-1:20 p.m. B101 JFSB