Courses that I teach regularly include WBIS (188), Honors Composition (110), Literature and Film (231), Introduction to English Studies (281), and Foundations of Literary Criticism (381/581). In WBIS and Honors Comp, we focus on Genocide in the 20th Century, as we develop the reading, writing, and research skills essential to university-level academic work. In English 281, we read a variety of literary texts and genres and engage the different interpretive strategies that can be used to analyze those texts accurately and productively. English 381 provides an in-depth encounter with the critical theories that underpin those strategies, asking some of the major questions that relate to our discipline: What is literature? What is a text? What is an author? What is history? How are issues of race, gender, and class interwoven with those questions? In addition, both 281 and 381 engage scholarly work in English studies and related fields, and we work on developing effective research methods.

See the links below for Spring 2012:

• 188 Writing-Based Inquiry Seminar: Genocide
• 231 Literature and Film
• 281 Introduction to English Studies

My general area of scholarly, and personal, interest is 20th and 21st century world literature and history. In recent years, much of my research has focused on genocide studies, especially the ideologies that contributed to the genocidal conflict and the ways in which literary texts and films have attempted to represent genocide. Other ongoing emphases in my research include the narratological enigma of first-person, present-tense fiction, the representation of traumatic events and experiences in fictional and non-fictional texts, and the fiction of the South African / Australian novelist J. M. Coetzee.

• Director, WBIS Program, 2010-2011
• Co-Director, WBIS Program, 2009-2010
• Chair, English Department Composition Committee, 2009-2011
• English Department Composition Committee, 1997-current
• English Department Technology Committee, 2008-2011 (Chair, 2008-9)
• Director, Radford Teaching Lab, 1999-2008

• Member, International Association of Genocide Scholars
• Member, International Society for the Study of Narrative
• Member, American Comparative Literature Association
• Member, Amnesty International

• UW Oshkosh Residence Life Recognition Award
• Academic Staff Professional Development Grant, UW Oshkosh
• National Society of Leadership and Success Excellence in Teaching Award
• Global Studies Institute Scholar Access Grant
• Distinguished Teaching Award, UW Oshkosh
• Academic Staff Professional Development Grant, UW Oshkosh
• Distinguished Teaching Award, Indiana University

Please consider listening to the Voices on Genocide podcast series available from the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Committee on Conscience website:

http://blogs.ushmm.org/index.php/COC2/