Faculty Member, English
Nanjing Normal University, School of Foreign Languages and Cultures
About
RESEARCH PROFILE
My main research fields are early American Literature and interdisciplinary American Studies. In particular, I study ways that American writers and literary cultures have been shaped by transformative historical forces such as religion, politics, technology, and commercial media. A focus on the role of media in the representation of religious life led to my recent book, "Imaginary Friends: Representing Quakers in American Culture, 1650-1950" (University of Wisconsin Press, 2009).
In more recent work, I have investigated the rise and development of American Roman Catholic literature and its adaptation by non-Catholic writers. My new book on this subject is "Faithful Passages: American Catholicism in Literary Culture, 1844-1931" (University of Wisconsin Press, 2012, forthcoming).
SELECTED ARTICLES
“Mailer and the ‘Diet of Reality’: Tough Guys Don’t Dance and American Values.” In Norman Mailer’s Later Fictions: Ancient Evenings Through Castle in the Forest. Ed. John Whalen-Bridge. New York: Palgrave, 2010. 39-52.
“Staging Quakerism in American Theatre and Film.” Quaker Studies 14.1 (2009): 57-71.
“Quakers in American Print Culture, 1800-1950.” In Religion and the Culture of Print in Modern America. Ed. Charles L. Cohen and Paul S. Boyer. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008. Pp. 41-71.
“‘Insatiable as Good Old America’: Tough Guys Don’t Dance and Popular Criminality.” Special issue on Norman Mailer since The Executioner’s Song. Ed. John Whalen-Bridge. Journal of Modern Literature 30.1 (Fall 2006), 17-22.
“Ishmael’s Recovery: Injury, Illness, and Convalescence in Moby-Dick.” Special issue on Disability. Ed. Samuel Otter and David T. Mitchell. Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies 8 (March 2006): 17-34.
“Antebellum Literary Criticism.” In: American History through Literature, 1820-1870, 2nd edition. Ed. Janet Gabler-Hover and Robert D. Sattelmeyer. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2006. 668-673.
“Orestes Brownson in Young America: Popular Books and the Fate of Catholic Criticism.” American Literary History 15 (2003): 443-470.
“Imaginary Friends: Representing Quakers in Early American Fiction.” Studies in American Fiction 44 (Fall 2003): 191-220.
“Melville in the Brotherhood: Freemasonry, Fraternalism, and the Artisanal Ideal.” In: Melville Among the Nations. Edited by Sanford E. Marovitz and A. C. Christodoulou. pp. 68-81. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press/Athens, Greece: Gutenberg Orbis Press, 2001.
“‘The Blind Authoress of New York’: Helen De Kroyft and the Uses of Disability in Antebellum America.” American Quarterly 51 (June 1999): 385-418.
“Sentimental Catechism: Archbishop James Gibbons, Mass-Print Culture, and American Literary History.” Religion and American Culture 7, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 81-120.
TEACHING
Students working with me have written theses and dissertations on a wide range of subjects in early and contemporary American studies, including mesmerism and health in the work of Margaret Fuller, cinematic representations of the nuclear age, visual iconography of the modern American military, archetypal analysis of Henry Thoreau’s writings, family and gender identity in 19th century American bestsellers, queer theory applied to the novels of Henry James, Quaker discourse in 18th century novels by Charles Brockden Brown, religion and family life in the Oneida perfectionist community, racial identity in early 20th century Southern fiction by Welty and Faulkner, the complexities of ritual sacrifice in Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, scientific discourse among American transcendentalists, and representations of masculinity in contemporary graphic novels
For my work with undergraduate and graduate students at AU, I have received the College of Liberal Arts Early Career Teaching Award.
During Spring and Summer 2012, I will be a Fulbright Lecturer assigned to the School of Foreign Languages and Cultures at Nanjing Normal University, People's Republic of China.
