Department of English at the University of Virginia

Interests

20th Century Literature (Irish and English); education of K-12 teachers

Books

• Of Poetry and Power: Literature and the Kennedys (in progress).
• The Storming of Parnassus: Poets, Politicians, and the Laureateship, 1892-1896 (in progress).
• Joyce and the Subject of History, University of Michigan Press, 1996, edited with Mark Wollaeger and Robert Spoo, and Joyce and History, a special issue of the James Joyce Quarterly publishing proceedings of the 1990 Yale Joyce and History conference, edited with Mark Wollaeger.
• Seeing Together: Friendship Between the Sexes in English Writing, from Mill to Woolf, Stanford University Press, 1993.

Articles

• "Raising the Bar: K-8," requested for Teaching Writing In the Liberal Arts (forthcoming).
• "Safe," Bloomsday Centennial commemorative journal, 2004.
• "Poetry, Casuality, and an Irish Ceasefire," The Peace Review, June 2001.

Presentations

• Major forum on "Teachers for a New Era," American Association for College Teachers of Education annual conference, New York City, February 2007
• Chair, "Beckett at 100 and Irish Writing," Modern Language Association Convention, December 2006
• "Teacher Quality and Induction," "Preparing Today's Leaders for Tomorrow's High Schools" conference, Alliance for Excellent Education, Washington, DC, October 2004
• "The Laureateship as Political Capital," Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies conference, Fairfax, Va., April 2002
• "Laureates and Prestige," Modernism and Prestige seminar, New Modernisms II Conference, University of Pennsylvania, October 2000

Other Positions Held

• Faculty member, Bread Loaf School of English, Middlebury College, 1993-; Merino Professor, 1998.
• Associate Professor of English and Director of University Writing, Brandeis University, 1994-1999.
• Assistant Professor of English, Yale University, 1988-94; Co-Director, Bass Writing Program, 1989-1992, 1993-1994.