Joined the faculty in 2001
Ph.D., English/American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2002
M.A., American Studies, Boston College, 1994
B.S., English and Education, Appalachian State University, 1991
Current Research Areas:
20th-century U.S. literature and culture
Post-World War II period (1940s-1960s)
Southern and Appalachian Studies
Gender and Sexuality
Previous Teaching Experience:
Visiting Instructor, Colgate University, 2000-2001
Teaching Assistant, UMass-Amherst, 1995-2000
Visiting Instructor, Appalachian State University, 1994-1995
Teaching Assistant, Boston College, 1993-1994
Courses Routinely Taught:
Southern Fictions
Popular Fiction
Cultural Theory
Sexuality and American Literature
Post-WWII American Novel
American Literature from Crane
Recent Publications:
monograph:
Perfectly Average: The Pursuit of Normality in Postwar America, Univ. of Massachusetts Press - forthcoming.
articles:
"The Erasure of Grace: Reconnecting Peyton Place to its Author" MOSAIC: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature - forthcoming.
"Postwar Sign, Symbol, and Symptom: The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit," in Cultures of Commerce: Representation and American Business Culture, 1877-1960, eds. Elspeth Brown, Catherine Gudis, Marina Moskovitz. (New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006), 277-293.
"Location, Location, Location: A Response to Cold Mountain," Appalachian Journal, 31:3-4 (Spring/Summer 2004), 327-332+.
Professional Affiliations:
American Studies Association
Personal Statement:
Because my background is in American Studies, I bring an interdisciplinary and historicist approach to the study of literary texts. I am interested in studying literature as culture, and as history. I am interested in the power relationships embedded in the reading and the writing of books, as well as the power relationships embedded in the tales between their covers. In my scholarship, I gravitate towards studying books that made a deep cultural impact, rather than books that are considered (by some) to be "great" or "classic." And in my courses, I work to shake up literary and other hierarchies by teaching famous authors alongside more marginalized ones, by interrogating all of our assumptions, and by keeping students active participants in the collective production of knowledge. I love my job, because literary study allows us (requires us, really) to sustain critical conversations about identity, difference, and justice.