Education
B.A., English & Religion, Greenville College, 1983
M.A., English Literature, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,1986
Ph.D., American Literature, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1991

Courses Taught
COR 101, Foundations in the Liberal Arts Tradition
ENG 100, Developmental English
ENG 101, Research & Writing
ENG 201, Introduction to Literature
ENG 325, Writing Fiction & Poetry
ENG 340, American Literature to 1875
ENG 452, American Novel
ENG 456, English Seminar

Research Interests
African American Slave Narratives
19th Century American Womens Fiction
Christianity and Literature

• Fulbright Professor of American Literature, University of Bergen, Norway, 1997-1998
• Invited Guest Lecturer on "Free Will and Determinism in 19th-Century American Literature" at the Center for American Studies in Rome, May 1998
• Assistant Director, National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for College Teachers: "Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Antebellum American Culture," Newberry Library, Chicago June-July, 1995
• Chair, Conference on Christianity and Literature’s Midwest Region, 1995-1996

• "New England Gothic by the Light of Common Day: Lizzie Borden and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's The Long Arm." The New England Quarterly. June 1997.
• "The Pliable Rhetoric of Domesticity." The Stowe Debate: Rhetorical Strategies in "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Mason I. Lowance, Jr., Ellen E. Westbrook, and R.C. De Prospo, editors. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1994.