At the University of Maryland, I am Professor of English and Faculty Director of the Center for Literary and Comparative Studies (2020-2023).
I tend to work in the Anglophone long eighteenth century, but embrace temporal, geographic, and generic capaciousness. My recent and current research turns to understanding how large concepts such as the imagination, wonder, and scrutiny shape literary knowledge and disciplinarity—in the past, today, and the future.
I have had opportunities to share my research in over fifty invited lectures and plenaries in the US, UK, and Germany. I have also received various grants and fellowships in the US and UK to support my work. A partial list includes the Senior Global Fellowship at St. Andrews University; the Senior Visiting Fellowship to New College, University of Oxford; the Visiting Research Fellowship, Institute of English Studies at the School for Advanced Study, University of London; the ASECS / The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Research Fellowship, Harry Ransom Center; the Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellowship; the Senior Research Fellowship, Queen Mary Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Queen Mary University of London; The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation / National Humanities Center Institute; and the Ford Foundation Scholarship, as well as numerous internal grants. I am also a Maryland Research Excellence Honoree and was named to the "Power 30 Higher Education List" by The Daily Record.
But my most cherished honor is that the Graduate English Organization in my home department has awarded me three separate mentorship prizes in the last ten years.
Particularly in this last decade, I have turned my vision to working towards what the Mellon Foundation calls “just communities.” I join my longstanding dedication to literary study with a sustained commitment to imagining and making more inclusive, and thus more dynamic and generative, academic communities among my students and peers. In my research, the large questions I take up ramify through the discipline, with specific benefits to imagining an innovative curriculum as well as wider engagement in the public humanities and cultural heritage. I see literature as an occasion where we congregate to focus on materials, questions, and problems one might not ordinarily encounter. But it is also how we gather to grapple with the intellectual, cultural, and political issues that shape our everyday experiences. I also view my work as both an opportunity and a responsibility—an opportunity to produce deeply considered research that redefines the field and a responsibility to make space for and cultivate the new ideas that will take our field and profession into a productive future within academic circles and beyond.
At the Center for Literary and Comparative Studies, I have developed academic programming focused on "Antiracism: Research • Teaching • Public Engagement" (2020-2021) and "Antiracism: Communities and Collaborations" (2021-2022), and this year (2022-2023) have launched a new pilot program, Public Humanities: Research & Engagement. I have also held other administrative posts on campus, including Associate Director of Graduate Studies, Director of Placement, Faculty Director of the Theory Certificate Program, and Associate Dean of the Graduate School. I recently worked with campus colleagues to re-launch the University of Maryland chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
I have served on the ASECS executive board and as a delegate to MLA, and serve my professional communities in a variety of other ways as well, including as an expert reader and reviewer for scholarly presses and journals, funding agencies, and universities, and as a mentor in a variety of fora.
My research, teaching, and service together reflect my commitment to academia and to the university as a vital civic institution. I have also learned that a robust intellectual and institutional vision must be paired with a sustainable, ethical, and inclusive work model.
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