Current Position:

Professor

Field Of Study:

The Novel/History of the Novel
The Anatomy/Menippean Satire
Short Fiction and the Novella

American Literature
Canadian Literature
Western Studies
North American Studies

Literary and Cultural Theory

Research Interests:

Currently at work on a book-length study, "Abysmal Folly:  Imperial Negation in American Fiction."  This project explores how Western philosophers, especially the Nietzscheans, have shaped the notion of "imperial negation" and studies how three major American novelists--Robert Stone in A Flag for Sunrise, Cormac McCarthy in Blood Meridian, and Leslie Marmon Silko in Almanac of the Dead--dramatize and interrogate the American inheritance of the imperial mantle and its underlying belief systems.

Courses:

Recent Graduate Courses Include:

Whales and Shaggy Dogs, Among Others
The Contemporary Novel
Introduction to Graduate Studies

Recent Undergraduate Courses Include:

The American Novel
American Monuments
Faulkner
Canadian Literature
The Novella

Education:

Ph.D.  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
M.A.  Dalhousie University
B.A. (Hons.)  University of Alberta

Teaching Experience:

Academic Appointments at:

Universite de Toulouse II-Le Mirail
University of Montana
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Selected Publications:

Books:

Co-Editor with Lisa Simon (University of Montana), These Living Songs:  Reading Montana Poetry.  (Forthcoming, University of Montana Press.)

Co-Editor with Barry Faulk (Florida State University), Punk Rock Warlord:  The Life and Work of Joe Strummer.  (Forthcoming, Ashgate.)

Editor,  All Our Stories Are Here:  Critical Perspectives on Montana Literature. (University of Nebraska Press 2009.)

Editor, Soldiers of Fortune by Richard Harding Davis. (Broadview 2006.)

Agent of Empire:  William Walker and the Imperial Self in American Literature. (University of Georgia Press 2004.)

 

Journal Issue:

Co-Editor with Tamas Dobozy (Wilfred Laurier University), Tripping Across the 49th Parallel. (A special issue of Short Story 2006.)

 

Articles in American Studies, Anglophonia, Arizona Quarterly, European Journal of American Studies, Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, Mattoid, Short Story, Southwestern American Literature, and others.

 

Fiction in Cerise Press,The Meadow, Serving House Journal, Short Story, Wascana Review, and others.