Associate Professor
My area of specialization is American poetry: reading it, interpreting it, and writing it. I like to locate poems in their concrete cultural contexts; for instance, one recent article examines Raymond Carver's poetry and the nineteenth-century popular "temperance" tradition.
My current research project is a literary history tentatively titled Rank Amateurs: American Poetry at the Margins, 1820-1920. I've also published two collections of poems: Distance Learning (1998) and Bird Skin Coat (2009).
In addition to my areas of specialization, I also teach courses on Transcendentalism, the Gilded Age, and the Beats of the 1950s.
Teaching Fields
- American Literature
- Creative Writing (Poetry)
Office Hours
SPRING 2012
- TUTH 11:00-12:30
Teaching Schedule
SPRING 2012
- 4260/101 TUTH 12:30-1:45 CU120
- 6600/101 TUTH 9:30-10:45 DS456
Research Interests
- American Poetry
- Popular Culture
- Children's Literature
Selected Publications
- Bird Skin Coat (poems). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009.
- “The Milwaukee School of Fleshly Poetry: Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Popular Aestheticism,” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 26: 1 (2009): 69-91.
- “Raymond Carver’s Poetry and the Temperance Tradition,” Raymond Carver Review 1:1 (Winter 2008): 19-32.
- "Approaches to Teaching the Schoolroom Poets," in Paula Bennett and Karen Kilcup, Approaches to Teaching Nineteenth-Century American Poetry. NY: Modern Language Association Press (2007): 93-105.
- “Symmetrical Womanhood: Poetry in the Woman’s Building Library,” Libraries and Culture 41: 1 (Winter 2006): 5-34.
- Schoolroom Poets: Childhood, Performance, and the Place of American Poetry, 1865- 1917. Becoming Modern series. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2005.
- Published Poems
Honors/Awards
- NEH grant (in collaboration with Sarah Wadsworth) from the American Library Association for an outreach project titled Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women. 2011.
- Brittingham Prize for poetry manuscript Bird Skin Coat, 2008.
- Honor Book Prize, Children’s Literature Association, 2007
- Summer Faculty Fellowship, Marquette University, 2006.
- Schlesinger Library Fellowship, Harvard University, 2005.
- Vivian Pollak Scholar-in-Amherst Award, Emily Dickinson International Society, 2003
- Urban Studies Institute Course Development Grant, Marquette University,2003.
- Summer Faculty Fellowship, Marquette University, 2002.
- Korzenik Fellowship, Longfellow Friends, 2002.
- Marquette University PT-3 Grant, 2001.
- Linfield College Faculty Fellowship, 1998.
- Stuart Tave Fellowship, University of Chicago, 1996.
- Discovery/The Nation (writing) Prize, The Nation and the Poetry Center of the 92nd Street “Y,” 1994.
- Brauer Grant, “Educating Emily Dickinson,” University of Chicago, 1994.
- John Fiske Poetry (writing) Prize, University of Chicago, 1993.
English Department
