Associate Professor
I teach a variety of courses focused on writing and reading, from seminars on topics such as “Rotten English,” “The Poetry of War,” and “Living the American Revolution” to “Modern English Grammar & Style” and “Reading and Writing Literary Nonfiction.” Some of my classes use an intellectually intensive role-playing game known as Reacting to the Past, and many of them ask students to collaborate with me in selecting texts to read, an approach I call the “blank syllabus.” I have written about this pedagogical strategy and about American, English, and African Literature, as well as about West Africa (where I lived for several years), for a range of publications, including Aeon, Civil War History, Essays in Criticism, Foreign Affairs, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The New Republic, The New York Times, Raritan, and the Yale Review.
Between 2002 and 2021 I taught and served as an administrator in the College of Arts & Sciences Writing Program. My interests in the intersection of literature, history, and ethics informed my book Cowardice: A Brief History, and these interests, along with my interests in pedagogy, continue to inform my teaching and scholarship.
My current project explores amanuenses, those who assist writers, from ancient to modern times, from Cicero’s enslaved and then freed assistant Marcus Tullius Tiro to Milton’s daughters, to Theodora Bosanquet, who served as secretary to Henry James. Also drawing on my own experience as secretary for the novelist Saul Bellow, the book addresses a range of questions, including: What is the nature of the amanuensis experience? What can we learn about famous authors and their work by looking at those who assist them? How do gender and class and power figure in such relations? What do they teach us about authority and autonomy, about “genius,” about editing and writing?
Selected Publications
- “The Blank Survey Syllabus,” Teaching the Literature Survey Course: New Strategies for College Faculty (West Virginia University Press, 2018)
- Cowardice: A Brief History (Princeton University Press, 2014, paperback 2016)
- “Whereof One Dare Not Speak,” Times Higher Education (2014)
- “The Execution of Private Slovik, Forty Years Later,” Los Angeles Review of Books (2014).
- “‘Cowardice Weakness or Infirmity, Whichever It May Be Termed’: A Shadow History of the Civil War.” Civil War History (2013)
- “Against Fluency: Walden in West Africa,” Raritan (2006)
- “Stardom is Born: The Religion and Economy of Publicity in Henry James’ The Bostonians,” American Literary Realism (1997)
Honors, Grants, and Awards
Fulbright Scholar, Başkent University, Ankara, Türkiye (2023-2024)
James E. Conway Excellence in Teaching Writing Award, Harvard Extension School (2023)
Bronze Medal in World History, Independent Publisher Book Awards, for Cowardice: A Brief History (2015)
Earhart Foundation Research Grant (2007-2008)
Fulbright Scholar, University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (2000-2002)