EDUCATION
- Ph.D. in English, The Pennsylvania State University, May 2008
- M.A. in English, The Pennsylvania State University, May 2002
- B.A. in English and Philosophy, Miami University (OH), magna cum laude, May 1997
TEACHING
American Literature
Contemporary Literature
Literary Criticism and Theory
Literature of the Environment
Composition
RESEARCH
- 20th and 21st century American Literature (William Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy, David Foster Wallace)
- Narrative Theory
- Cognitive Literary Studies
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
- "A Case Study in Curriculum Redesign: The English Major at Governors State University.” ADE Bulletin (forthcoming, 2025 issue). Co-authored with Amanda Athon, Liam Lanigan, Kerri Morris, Rashidah Muhammad, Cindy Rousseau, and Brad Smith.
- “Narrative Crisis and Renewal in the Age of Information: David Foster Wallace’s ‘Mister Squishy.’” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 61.5 (2020)
- “Embodied Reading and Narrative Empathy in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.” Studies in the Novel 47.4 (2015)
- “Dreaming the Border Trilogy: Cormac McCarthy and Narrative Creativity.” The Cormac McCarthy Journal 13.1 (2015)
- “Reading Visions and Visionary Reading in Blood Meridian.” Southwestern American Literature 36.3 (2011).
- “The Modern Magnetic Animal: As I Lay Dying and the Uncanny Zoology of Modernism.” Journal of Modern Literature 31.3 (2008).
SELECTED CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
- “Voicing Wallace’s ‘Oblivion’: Inner Speech, Linguistic Bodies, and the Shared Agency of the Reading Act.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, New Orleans, LA. January 9-12, 2025. (Presented as part of a panel I organized on “David Foster Wallace, Cognitive Literary Studies, and the Twenty-First Century Mind.”)
- “Literary Attention and the Mind-Wandering Reader: A Cognitive Take on ‘The Soul Is Not a Smithy.’ International David Foster Wallace Society Conference. Austin, TX. June 7-8, 2024.
- “Infinite Jest and the Aesthetics of Attunement: Fiction as Mood Work.” International David Foster Wallace Society Conference. Austin, TX. June 2-4, 2022.
- “Kinaesthetic Reading and Infinite Jest.” American Literature Association, 30th Annual Conference. Boston, MA. May 23-26, 2019.
- “Thinking with David Foster Wallace: A Cognitive Reading of ‘Mister Squishy.’” Annual International Conference on Narrative. Montreal, Quebec, Canada. April 19-22, 2018.
- “Infinite Jest and the Embodied Reader.” American Literature Association: 28th Annual Conference on American Literature. Boston, MA. May 25-28, 2017
- “Marilynne Robinson’s Poetics of Estrangement: The Case of Jack Boughton.” Southeast Conference on Christianity and Literature. Charleston, SC. April 9-11, 2015
- “Re-Enchanting Doomed Enterprises: Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing as Ritualized Space.” American Literature Association Symposium: “Ernest Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy, and Their Traditions,” in New Orleans, LA. October 2012
- “An Uncanny Ecology: Animal Worlds and Human Dwelling in Cormac McCarthy.” The Cormac McCarthy Society 2011 Symposium on the Southwestern Novels, Austin, TX. November 2011
- “Reading Visions, Visionary Reading: The Gothic Optics of Blood Meridian.” The Cormac McCarthy Society Annual Conference, in San Marcos, TX. October 2010
- “Postsecular Ecology in Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing.” American Literature Association Symposium on American Fiction 1890 to the Present, in Savannah, GA. October 2010