Education
PhD, Lehigh University, 1992
MA, Columbia University, 1987
BA, Fordham University, 1986
Publications
Books:
Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, vol. 2 (Senior Editor), 2016
A New Book of the Grotesques: Contemporary Approaches to Sherwood Anderson's Early Fiction, 2005
Antebellum Irish Immigration and Emerging Ideologies of "America": A Protestant Backlash, 2002
Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, vol. 1 (Senior Editor), 2001
Selected Essays:
"'Thinking Small': Sherwood Anderson's South and Modern America," Midwestern Miscellany 37 (2009): 33-44
"Windy McPherson's Son: Sowing the Seeds of Winesburg's Twisted Apples," MidAmerica 28 (2001): 13-22
"The Book of the Grotesque: Textual Theory and the Editing of Winesburg, Ohio," Studies in Short Fiction 35.3 (1998): 287-96
"Avoiding Labels: Recasting a Canon Via Myth Criticism," College Literature 19 (1992): 136-41
"Absalom, Absalom! and the Ripple-Effect of the Past," University of Mississippi Studies in English 10 (1992): 56-66
"Plainer Speaking: Sherwood Anderson's Non-Fiction and the 'New Age,'" MidAmerica 19 (1992): 87-95
"A Need for a Critical Winesburg, Ohio," Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 84 (1990): 303-04
"Beyond Grotesqueness in Winesburg, Ohio," Midwest Quarterly 31 (1990): 180-91
Creative Work:
"Benito Cereno," screen adaptation of Herman Melville's novella, Semi-Finalist in the SoCal Independent Film Festival, 2016
Selected Courses:
Major American Author: Emerson and Thoreau
1970s New York in Prose and Film
Parallel Lines: Emerson, Thoreau, and 21st-Century America
Narrative Duplicity in the American Short Story
Ulysses
Sherwood Anderson and Some Cross-Currents of Modernism
Southern Literature and Culture
Early American Literature
American Renaissance
James Joyce's Dublin (study-abroad course)
Major American Author: Melville
American Myth-making in Prose and Film
American Canon(s)
Selected Professional Activity:
Recipient, MidAmerica Award, "for distinguished contributions to the study of Midwestern Literature," Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, 2014
Editorial Board Member, Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature (publishes two journals), 2009-
Reviewer by invitation of over a dozen essays or books
Fulbright Senior Scholar, Eötvös Loránd University, József Eötvös University College, Budapest, Hungary, 1996