I am passionate about ideas and collaborating to solve real-world problems. From 2016 to 2023, I have served as Director of the Institute for the Study of Culture & Society (ICS) at Bowling Green State University. ICS is an interdisciplinary public humanities center supporting faculty research, fostering campus and community collaborations, and programming special events. In 2019 I was awarded the David Hoch Memorial Award for Excellence in Service from Ohio Campus Compact, a consortium of 42 member institutions committed to service-learning and/or civic engagement, for my leadership of ICS.

I am also a professor of English and American Culture Studies and an affiliated faculty member in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at Bowling Green State University.

I earned my BA in English from Northwestern University and my MA and PhD from the University of Virginia. I am the author of two books and numerous articles, book chapters, and works of public scholarship. I recently co-edited with Cathy Schlund-Vials a special issue of MELUS devoted to “Re-Thinking, Re-Reading, and Re-Seeing Ethnic Historical Fiction.” I have also co-written. series of articles on shared governance and higher education leadership. (See Publications page for details.)

I regularly teach courses in twentieth-century and contemporary American literature and popular culture, American Studies, and literary theory and cultural studies (See Teaching Experience page for more information). I am involved in digital humanities work relating to digital curation in the classroom. (See Digital Humanities page for details.) I co-authored a journal article on digital curation, which was published in Pedagogy. From 2017-2018, I served as a member of the Education Advisory Committee of the Digital Public Library of America. In June 2020, I was part of an interdisciplinary team awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities CARES grant for a project entitled “Towards a Pedagogy from Crisis: Adaptive Teaching and Learning at Bowling Green State University During COVID-19.”

My passion for collaboration extends to faculty and students nationally and internationally. I serve as co-chair of the American Studies Association-Japanese Association of American Studies Project Advisory Committee, which fosters international scholarly collaboration. In Summer 2019, I traveled to Japan as an American Studies Association (ASA) delegate to the Japanese Association of American Studies (JAAS) annual conference and participated in proseminars at Doshisha University (Kyoto) and Chuo University (Tokyo). In Summer 2017, I participated in an NEH-funded institute on “Understanding Im/Migration: Local and Global Perspectives,” with the aim of rethinking undergraduate curricula at BGSU. In Summer 2014, I participated in the NEH Summer Institute, “Finding Mississippi in the National Civil Rights Narrative: Struggle, Institution Building, and Power at the Local Level,” at Jackson State University.

I am committed to working with the public to increase diversity and equity across large, complex systems. To this end, I regularly collaborate with K-12 school districts, public libraries, higher education institutions, and community organizations to develop workshops, training programs, and policies designed to create cultures of opportunity and access. From 2020-2021, I served as chair of the Perrysburg Coalition for Inclusion and Social Justice, focused on community engagement and public policy at the local level. [See the page on Consulting, Workshops, and Public Speaking for more information.]

My detailed CV can be accessed here.