- Office Location
Scott Hall 224
- Office Hours
- Contact Professor
With Pitzer Since: 2023
- Ph.D. Vanderbilt University
- M.A. University of York (UK)
- B.A. University of Chicago
- Hemispheric American literature from 1492 to 1917;
- trans-Atlantic literary exchanges;
- and literature concerning the early US-South.
- ENGL11aPZ: American Literature to 1865
- ENGL013PZ: Science Fiction and 19th-Century America
- ENGL141PZ: Love & Violence in Early America
- ENGL162PZ: Freedom of (and from) Religion in Early American Literature
- ENGL175PZ: Gothic America
- FS044PZ: College Campus Culture in Literature
- Romancing Oppression [under revision at the request of an academic press]
- De-Canonizing the Canon [in preparation]
“Anti-Abolitionism, US-Southern Writers, & the ‘Negatively Capable’ Poet John Keats,” in ELH 92.1 (2025) 119-46. (NOTE: Available in special Open Access Issue, https://doi.org/10.1353/elh.2025.a954018; Nominated for 1921 Essay Prize, INCSA annual prizes)
“Wealth and Exchange in Early American Literature, 1516-1775,” in Money in American Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2025), 25-43.
“Virginia Before Jefferson—Spotlight: William Byrd II,” in The Routledge Companion to Literature of the U.S. South (2022), 258-260.
“Nobody’s Gold: Fictionality in Ralegh’s Discoverie of Guiana (1596),” in EAL 56.3 (2021): 699-731. (Note: Journal editors’ nominee, 1921 Prize for Best Essay in American Literature, 2021).
“Neville’s The Isle of Pines (1668) & Defoe’s The True-Born Englishman (1700/01),” Restoration 43.1 (2019): 9-34.
“Absalom, Absalom!” in Literary Geography: an Encyclopedia of Real & Imagined Place Settings (ABC-Clio, 2019), 1-4. (NOTE: Collection 1st place winner in reference category for Eric Hoffer Award, 2020; Collection named finalist for Evvy Awards by Colorado Independent Publishers association, 2020)
“Thomas Jefferson’s Anglo-Saxon Genesis: A Romance,” Modern Philology 114.3 (2017): 680-701. (Note: Journal editors’ nominee, James Clifford L. Prize for outstanding scholarship in 18th-century literature, 2017).
“Thomas Jefferson’s Ossianic Romance,” Studies in 18th-Century Culture 45 (2016): 19-35.
“William Hazlitt, Liber Amoris, & the Imagination” European Romantic Review 25.6 (2014): 743-56.
“Crafts, Jacobs, and the Functions of British Fiction in African-American Slave Narratives,” ALA Symposium; Santa Fe, NM; October 16-18, 2025
“Wheatley Peters’ ‘To the University of Cambridge,’ & (De-)Sentimentalized Bodies.” online ASECS; March 29, 2025
“How Black African Slavery in the English Caribbean Shapes the Restoration Era in Behn’s Oroonoko,” MLA meeting, New Orleans; January 11, 2025
“The Francophobic Face of Poe,” ALA meeting, Chicago, IL; May 23, 2024
“Teaching Jacobs & Child Together,” pedagogy roundtable paper, ALA meeting, Chicago, IL; May 23, 2024
“Trans-Sectionalism, Anti-Abolitionism, and The Western Messenger (1835-1841)’s Relocation from Cincinnati to Louisville,” Interdisciplinary 19th-Century Studies Annual Meeting, Cincinnati, OH; March 24, 2024
“Old Deb and Claiming Groundlessness in Brown’s Edgar Huntly,” ALA Symposium; Sant Fe, NM; Oct. 27, 2023
“Early American Literature, Money, and Chaotic Value,” SEA Biennial Meeting; College Park, MD; June 10, 2023
“The Reconquista, Colonel Jack, & Colonial Romance,” MLA annual conference; San Francisco, CA; January 7, 2023
“Fictionality and Finance,” roundtable presentation, MLA annual conference; San Francisco, CA; January 6, 2023
“Medievalism, Reactionary Intellectualism, and Racial-Capitalist Violence,” Conference on Race and American Medievalism in the US South and Beyond; Tuscaloosa, AL; September 8-10, 2022
“Junk Pedagogies, Insular Radicalism, & America’s Racist Canon,” SAMLA virtual conference; Nov. 4, 2021
“British Romanticism, White Southern Poetry, & the Evil of Banality,” ICR virtual conference; October 14, 2021
“Autopoiesis, Slavery, White Privilege, & the Law in the New Republic,” virtual ASECS; April 9, 2021
“Phillis Wheatley Peters, Thomas Jefferson, & Religious Freedom,” virtual SEA Biennial Meeting; March 7, 2021
“Phillis Wheatley, Trauma, Self-Care, and Social Distance,” virtual SEASECS; February 25, 2021
“Indigenizing Columbia and White Masculinity in the US Long C19,” seminar paper, virtual C19; Oct. 25, 2020
“Tear Down our False Idols: De-Canonizing the Canon,” roundtable presentation, virtual C19; October 23, 2020
“‘Enlightened’ Patriarchy & Maternal Erasure in Royall Tyler’s The Contrast,” ISECS; Edinburgh, UK; July 14, 2019
“How the New Critics Invented John Keats,” Louisville Conference; Louisville, KY; February 21, 2019
“The Rise of Fictionality in Ralegh’s Discovery of Guiana.” SCMLA Annual Meeting; San Antonio, TX; Oct. 12, 2018
“The Declaration of Independence as Utopia,” SEA Biennial Meeting; Tulsa, OK; March 2, 2017
“Hemispheric America & Paul Muldoon’s Madoc,” Louisville Conference; Louisville, KY; February 19, 2016
“Anti-Colonial Christianity in Robert Southey’s Madoc,” SCMLA Annual Meeting; Nashville, KY; October 15, 2015
“The Isle of Pines and Bastard Utopias,” ASECS; Los Angeles, CA; March 20, 2015
“Poe and the Romance Genre,” International Poe Conference; New York City, NY; February 27, 2015
“Thomas Jefferson and James Macpherson,” ASECS, Williamsburg; March 21, 2014
“Reform, Reformation, and Re-formation in Defoe,” SEASECS Annual Meeting; Knoxville, TN; February 27, 2014
“Thomas Jefferson’s Saxon Genesis,” SEA Biennial Meeting; Savannah, GA; March 2, 2013
“The 18th-Century South in Faulkner,” ASECS Annual Meeting; San Antonio, TX; March 22, 2012
“Teresia Constantia Phillips’ Memoir and Fictionality,” SCSECS Annual Meeting; Asheville, NC; February 25, 2012
“Transatlantic Studies,” seminar position paper, NAVSA; Nashville TN; November 5, 2011
“Daniel Defoe & Racial Englishness,” 2nd Biennial Defoe Conference (Worcester, UK) July 16, 2011;
“Daniel Defoe & Racial Englishness,” Bloodwork Conference (College Park, MD); May 6, 2011
“Transatlantic Whiteness in Poe’s Southern Gothic,” NEASECS Annual Meeting; Buffalo, NY; October 23, 2010
“Hazlitt’s Imagination and the State,” First-year PhD Student Symposium, Vanderbilt University; April 3, 2009
“Georg Forster & South Pacific Colonialism,” CECS Postgraduate Forum, University of York (UK); May 13, 2008