I was born and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania, and received my B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and Ph.D. from Harvard, with a dissertation on Spenser's Faerie Queene. At U.H., I have taught the undergraduate courses on Milton and Shakespeare, undergraduate courses on war literature and the Vietnam war (in which I served), and other courses for majors, sophomores, and freshmen. For several years, I was the Managing Editor for Biography, a university journal of life writing. I have also twice taught U.H. undergraduates in London during semesters abroad, and was a visiting lecturer at a British college in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. My research interest is English Renaissance literature, with publications on Shakespeare and Spenser, but I have also published on literary biography and Vietnam War literature. Recently, I co-edited a book on how children's language is represented in literary texts, and my book A Trauma Artist: Tim O'Brien and the Fiction of Vietnam was published in 2001 by University of Iowa Press.

Areas of Interest
Renaissance literature, Spencer, biography, Vietnam War literature

Education
BA, University of Pennsylvania
PhD, Harvard University

Awards
College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature Excellence in Teaching Award, 2001