Education 

State University of New York, Stony Brook, Ph.D. 2007
DePaul University, BA, English 1998

Honors, Fellowships, Awards

   • Excel Fellowship, Office of the Vice President of Research, Fall 2024
   • Morrison Research Fellowship, Department of English, Spring 2024
   • University of South Carolina, College of Arts and Sciences Travel Grant, Spring 2020
   • Provost Arts and Humanities Fellowship, Spring 2018
   • Faculty Fellow, South Carolina Race and Reconciliation Collaborative, 2016
   • Faculty Fellow of English Language and Literature, Peter and Bonnie McCausland, 2015
   • Teacher of the Year Award, Department of English, 2015-2016
   • Provost Arts and Humanities Fellowship, 2012
   • American Council of Learned Societies Faculty Fellowship, 2010-2011
   • Josephine Abney Fellowship for Research in Women’s and Gender Studies, 2012
   • Mayers Faculty Fellowship, Huntington Library, 2009
   • Morton E. Kahn Award, Best Dissertation, SUNY, Stony Brook, 2007

Courses 

ENGL 840    Graduate Seminar: Maritime Literatures
ENGL 750    Graduate Seminar: The Atlantic World Novel
ENGL 742    Hemispheric American Studies-the long nineteenth century
ENGL 700    Introduction to Graduate Studies
ENGL 429 Early American Literature
ENGL 428b African American Literature, 1903-present
ENGL 412 US Literature, 1830-1860
ENGL 383 Romanticism
ENGL 384 Realism (European and American)

Publications and Current Research

BOOKS
   • Hemispheric Regionalism: Romance and the Geography of Genre (Oxford University Press, 2016)
   • Walter Scott in America (in progress, edited collection with Juliet Shields)
   • Secrecy, Race, and Violence in U.S. Literature (in progress, book length manuscript)

I have been working on secrecy and secret histories for several years. In my first book, Hemispheric Regionalism: Romance and the Geography of Genre (OUP 2016), I became fascinated by narratives of concealment and disclosure about and between Cuba, Haiti, and the U.S. South. Secrecy can be found everywhere in contemporary culture, from tabloid expose¢ to ostensible news hours and crime shows, to military and political operations. Secret Societies, like London’s Garrick Club and U.S. based Society for American Civic Renewal, are thriving as current newspaper articles highlight. Of course, secret societies are not new in U.S. culture and have always had strong connections to forms of power and authority, institutional and otherwise. While historians have examined secret societies, and despite the popularity of U.S. Freemasonry in eighteenth-and-nineteenth centuries, there is no literary history of secret societies or secrecy broadly. When secrecy is referenced, it is often connected to feelings of shame or is used interchangeably with privacy. My project isolates, defines, and traces secrecy in secret societies, visual culture, popular literature, and nonfiction to demonstrate its relationship to race, violence, and power. The pervasiveness of secrecy in the United States, I argue, ultimately connects policing identities by secret societies to the ways fiction unfolds in literature. That white masculinity is powerful in early American nationalism is a well-known story; that secrecy is integral to its power is less known.

ARTICLES and CHAPTERS
   • "History, Romance, and the Novel." Oxford Handbook of Charles Brockden Brown, Ed. 2 Philip Barnard and Stephen Shapiro. Oxford, Oxford University Press (2019): 155-170.
   • Secret History in the Early Nineteenth-Century Americas. The Secret History in Literature, 1660-1820. Eds., Rebecca Bullard and Rachel Carnell. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (2017): 242-255.
   • "Haiti and the U.S. Novel" The Haitian Revolution and the Early United States, Eds Elizabeth Maddock Dillon and Michael Drexler. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press (2016): 232-249.
   • "Trials and Confessions of Fugitive Slave Narratives"  Journeys of the Slave Narrative in the Early Americas, Eds. Nicole N. Aljoe and Ian Finesth. Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press (2014): 47-73.
   • "Geography, Genre, and Hemispheric Regionalism," Atlantic Studies, 10:2 (2013): 211-227.
   • "Romance to Novel: A Secret History." NARRATIVE, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Oct 2009): 255-273.
   • "John Howison’s New Gothic Nationalism and Transatlantic Exchange." Early American Literature. 44, 2 (2008): 309-335.

REVIEWS
   • "History, Romance, and the Novel." Oxford Handbook of Charles Brockden Brown, Ed. 2 Philip Barnard and Stephen Shapiro. Oxford, Oxford University Press (2019): 155-170.
   • Secret History in the Early Nineteenth-Century Americas. The Secret History in Literature, 1660-1820.  Eds., Rebecca Bullard and Rachel Carnell. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (2017): 242-255.
   • Ward, Candace. Crossing the Line: Early Creole Novels and Anglophone Caribbean Culture in the Age of Emancipation. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2017. The ALH Online Review, March 2019. Review
   • Kennedy, Gerald J. Strange Nation: Literary Nationalism and Cultural Conflict in the Age of Poe. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016. “Poe’s Queer Eye.” Poe Studies: History, Theory, Interpretation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, v. 50, 2017. E5-E11.
   • Bergeaud, Émeric. Stella: A Novel of the Haitian Revolution. Translated and edited by Lesley S. Curtis & Christen Mucher. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2015. The ALH Online Review, October 2016. Review
   • Brickhouse, Anna. The Unsettlement of America: Translation, Interpretation, and the Story of don Luis de Velasco, 1560-1945. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015. Early American Literature, v.50, n. 3 (2015): 953-959.
   • Cohen, Margaret. The Novel and the Sea. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010. “Maritime Novelism.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction, 45:3 (2012): 455-460.
   • Pratt, Lloyd. Archives of American Time: Literature and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History, 40:2 (2011): 17-22.
   • Shapiro, Stephen. The Culture and Commerce of the Early American Novel: Reading the Atlantic World-System. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Press, 2008. Huntington Library Quarterly, 73:2 (2-10): 339-343.

ENTRIES
   • “Teaching Ira and Isabella; or, The Natural Children. A Novel, Founded in Fiction.  (1807).” Just Teach One. No. 13, Summer 2018. Jto.Americanantiquarian.org
   • In the Cage.” A Critical Companion to Henry James, Eds. Eric Haralson and Kendall Johnson. Facts on File: New York, NY (2009): 246-255.

Conferences and Lectures 

INVITED LECTURES
   • “Meditation on critical regionalism, the sea, and ‘comparative’ literary studies.” American Literature Colloquium. University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC: 2014.
   • “Historical Distance and the American Mediterranean.” International symposium. Hemispheric Encounters: The Early United States in a Transatlantic Perspective. University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany: April 2012.
   • “Geography and Genre: Cross-Dressing, Piracy, and the Global South.” Josephine Abney Lecture. University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC: March 2012.
   • “Buccaneers and Filibusteros: Cuba, Periódicos, and U.S. Popular Romance.” The Institute for African American Research. University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC: March 2011.
   • “Desperate Form and Singular ‘Effect’ in Poe’s Periodical Fiction.” The Art Institute, South Carolina Poetry Initiative, Richland Public Library, Columbia, SC: 2010.

RECENT CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS   
“Scott, Secrecy, and the South.” Thirteenth International Walter Scott Conference. University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC: May 2024.
   • “Wayward Forms.” C19 Americanists and Critical University Studies.” Roundtable. C19: Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists. Pasadena, CA: March 2024.
   • Chair. “C19 Caribbean: Circulation and Region. Seminar.” C19: Society of Nineteenth- Century Americanists. Coral Gables, FL: April 2020.
   • “Circulating Information in the West.” Chair/Respondent. SEA: The Society of Early Americanists. Eugene, OR: March 2019.
   • “Climates of Secrecy.” Roundtable with Justine Murison. C19: Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists. Albuquerque, NM: March 2018.
   • “Discerning Secrecy.” Eleventh International Scott Conference. Paris, France: July 2018.
   • “Public Secrecy, Private Memory.” Roundtable. SEA: The Society of Early Americanists. Tulsa, OK: March 2017.
   • “The Coquette; or, the Secret History of Elizabeth Whitman.” Working Group on the History of the Novel in America. SEA: Society of Early Americanists. Tulsa, OK: March 2017.
   • “Unsettling Forms.” Roundtable. C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists. College Station, PA: March 2016.
   • “Meditations on Critical Regionalism, the sea, and ‘comparative’ literary studies.” Race and Empire Caucus. American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies. Los Angeles, CA: March 2015.
   • “Little Histories.” Microgeneres in the Eighteenth Century. American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies. Los Angeles, CA: March 2015.
   • “Geographies of Memory in Nineteenth-Century America.” Roundtable. Modern Language Association. Vancouver, BC: January 2015.

Academic Service

DEPARTMENTAL and UNIVERSITY
   - Faculty Advisory Committee, Department of English, 2024-2026
   - Graduate Program Admissions Committee, English, 2012-2013; 2023-present
   - Latinx Literature and Culture Search Committee, 2021-2022
   - Associate Director, Program in Global Studies, 2017-2021 (appointed)
   - Faculty Advisory Committee, Department of English, 2019-2021
   - Annual Faculty Review Committee, Department of English, 2019-2021 (Chair 2021)
   - University Committee on Diversity and Inclusion, 2019-2022
   - Faculty Mentor to Humanities Scholars, Trio McNair Opportunity, 2016-2018
   - Humanities Course Professor, Trio McNair Opportunity, 2019
   - The Welcome Table Facilitator, SC Race and Reconciliation, 2017-2018
   - African American Literature Search Committee, 2016-2017
   - Contemporary Global Literatures Search Committee, 2013-2014
   - Graduate Program Committee, English, 2012-2014; 2023-present
   - McNair Scholars Mentor, 2012-2015
   - Carolina and McNair Scholar Selection and Interview Committee, 2012-2015
   - Graduate Job Placement Committee, English, 2011
   - Eighteenth-Century Digital Humanities Search Committee, 2011-2012
   - Josephine Abney Faculty Research Award Committee, 2011-2012
   - Women’s Studies Undergraduate Award Committee, 2008-2011
   - Undergraduate Program Committee, English, 2008-2011; 2014-2017
   - Faculty Advisor and Creator of the Undergraduate English Association, 2008-2013
   - Faculty Advisor, Graduate Literature Society (Graduate Student Organization), 2008-2016

PROFESSIONAL
   • C19: Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, nominated and ran for VP/President 2025-2029
   • Early Career Mentor, 2024-2027
   • Thirteenth International Walter Scott Conference, Program Committee Member and Host
   • Edinburgh Network for Studies in Secrecy (founder, Penny Fielding)
   • Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Editorial Board
   • C19: Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, Program Committee Member, 2018-2020
   • Virtual Program Committee, 2020
   • Clio, A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History, Book Review Editor, 2014-2018 (appointed)
   • African American Review, Early American Studies, Genre, ESQ, Studies in American Fiction, Broadview Press, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, University of North Carolina Press, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Reader/Referee
   • American Studies Association, American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies, c19: Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, Modern Language Association, SEA: Society of Early Americanists, Member