I teach early and nineteenth-century American literature. I earned my Ph.D. in English from Purdue University in 2004, and I am the author of The Romance of the Holy Land in American Travel Writing, 1790-1876 (Ashgate, 2007) and Melville's Mirrors: Literary Criticism and America's Most Elusive Author (Camden House, 2011) and a co-editor of Journeys: The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing. I was recently named the series editor for the Literary Criticism in Perspective series at Camden House Press. I am also a contributing scholar to Melville’s Marginalia Online, and author of the introduction and notes for the site to Melville’s marginalia to the New Testament and Psalms (the introduction has now been published, and the notes will be appearing soon). My interest in Melville and the digital humanities has led me to become associated with the Melville Electronic Library and to expand my role with Melville's Marginalia Online to include work on the production of edited images for the site. I am currently working on a study of religious pluralism in Melville’s fiction and poetry. My research interests include the global aspects of American literature, religion and literature, literary history and biography, literature and epistemology, and the literature of reform and abolitionism. I can envision future major projects on the cultural history of American missionaries in the nineteenth century and Pennsylvania German literary cultures. I teach courses on early and nineteenth-century American literature, literary non-fiction, poetry, Gothic fiction, and the novel. I have taught major author courses on Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Henry David Thoreau.
Books
Melville's Mirrors: Literary Criticism and America's Most Elusive Author (2011)
Herman Melville is among the most thoroughly canonized authors in American literature, and the body...
The Romance of the Holy Land in American Travel Writing, 1790-1876 (2007)
This book is the first to engage with the full range of American travel writing...
Articles
Alternative Atlantics: Anglo-American and German American Literary Transnationalism in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Journal of American Studies (2013)
Betting on Fiction: Nation, Diaspora, Technology, and Anglophone Literary Networks in Shehan Karunatilaka's The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, South Asian Review (2013)
Reading "the Indies": Transnational Ventures in Early American Literature, Early American Literature (2012)
South Asia in the Margins of Nineteenth-Century American Literature: Missionaries, Transcendentalists, and Indian Travelers in America, Margins (2011)
This essay discusses the broad presence of representations of South Asia in nineteenth-century American literature,...
Introduction to Melville's Marginalia in The New Testament and The Book of Psalms, Melville's Marginalia Online (2011)
Book Chapters
Poe's Poetry of the Exotic, Critical Insights: The Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe (2010)
This essay examines Edgar Allan Poe's poetry in relation to popular nineteenth-century American travel writing....
Reader Response and the Interpretation of "Hop-Frog," "How to Write a Blackwood Article," and "The Tell-Tale Heart", Approaches to Teaching Poe's Prose and Poetry (2008)
This essay discusses ways in which reader response can enrich the teaching of Poe's short...
Published Abstracts
Performing a Literary Googly: Cricket, Nation, and Technology in Shehan Karunatilaka’s Chinaman, The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, South Asian Literary Association (2012)
Abstract published in the 2011 Winter SALA Newsletter.
Diasporic Realisms, Hybrid Genres: The Social Texture of Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate, South Asian Literary Association (2011)
Abstract published in the South Asian Literary Association Newseletter, Winter 2010
Crack'd Archangel: Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, the Bible, and Religious Difference in Melville's Fiction and Poetry, The Melville Society at MLA (2010)
Abstract for December 28, 2009 MLA Paper published in March 2010 Leviathan
Melville and Religious Experience, The Melville Society at ALA (American Literature Association) (2010)
Abstract for Melville Society panel at ALA 2010 on Melville and Religious Experience (I was...
American Missionaries and Gender Politics in South Asia: Mark Twain's Following the Equator and Harriet Winlsow's Memoir, South Asian Literary Association Conference (2008)
Abstract published in South Asian Review 29.4 (2008): 68.
Book Reviews
Review of Tabish Khair, et al., Other Routes: 1500 Years of African and Asian Travel Writing (2008)
The link will allow you to view a PDF of the review if you have...