I received my Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University and began teaching at UMD in the fall of 2008. I teach a variety of courses at UMD on topics ranging from the early American novel to contemporary "tales of terror." In spring 2011, I was awarded the Teaching Award for Tenure-Track Faculty by UMD's College of Liberal Arts. My research examines the competing constructions of nationalism, sovereignty, and citizenship in early American literature and culture. Currently, I am at work on a book project entitled Divided Sovereignties: Genealogies of Nationhood, Citizenship, and Law in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture. I also serve as the Vice President of the James Fenimore Cooper Society and as one of two associate editors of the James Fenimore Cooper Society Newsletter.

Research Interests: multiethnic U.S. literatures, political theory; constructions of citizenship and national identity; periodical literatures; transatlantic print culture; and law and literature.

Recent Publications:
"William Apess, the 'Lost Tribes,' and Indigenous Survivance." Studies in American Indian Literatures 25.2 (forthcoming)
"'Yours in the Cause': Readers, Correspondents, and the Editorial Politics of Carlos Montezuma's Wassaja.” American Periodicals 22.1 (2012): 72-93.
“'The Wizard of Oil': Abraham James, Harmonial no. 1, and the Psychometric History of the Oil Industry.” Journal of American Studies 46.2 (2012): 313-36.
“Martin R. Delany and Rhetorics of Divided Sovereignty.” African American Culture and Legal Discourse. Ed. Lovalerie King and Richard Schur. New York: Palgrave, 2009. 39-56.
“Cultivation, Commerce, and Cupidity: Late-Jacksonian Virtue in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Crater.” Literature in the Early American Republic 1 (2009): 57-88.

Teaching Interests: Early American literature, African American literatures, American Indian literatures, the novel, literary theory, captivity narratives, gothic literature, Transcendentalism and nature writing

Courses:
Engl. 1666: Tales of Terror
Engl.3563: American Literature I (Origins-1865)
Engl.3906: Methods of Literary Study
Engl.5572: American Renaissance
Engl. 5574: Studies in American Literature to 1914
Engl.5577: Major American Authors
Engl. 5581: American Novel 1