Department of English

I teach, and write about, nineteenth- and twentieth-century American and Canadian literature and culture. One of my long-standing interests is ecocriticism, specifically early American nature writing—hence my book on The Poetics of Natural History, my edition of the writings of John James Audubon, and the ecocritical anthology, A Keener Perception, which I co-edited with the art historian Alan Braddock (College of William and Mary). Another abiding passion is nineteenth-century American poetry. In Longfellow Redux, I tried to understand a period in which poetry was meant to be read by a broad, transnational audience.

Studying manuscripts and rare books is essential to my research and teaching. In recent years, I have worked extensively with public institutions, the National Park Service, the Field Museum in Chicago, the Maine Historical Society, and Harvard University’s Houghton Library. I was a consultant for, and appear in, three award-winning documentaries on John James Audubon, and I have directed two NEH Institutes on John James Audubon at the Lilly Library.

I am the author of several biographies, including Louis Agassiz: Creator of American Science (Houghton Mifflin), which was Editor’s Choice of The New York Times Book Review in February 2013, and Max Eastman: A Life (Yale), the first biography to make use of the rich Eastman archives at the Lilly Library. Other recent books include a translation of the first German western, The Arkansas Regulators (with Charles Adams, Berghahn Books), an annotated edition of Stephen Spender’s first, previously unpublished volume, Poems Written Abroad (Indiana University Press), and a book about John James Audubon's work on aquatic birds (Audubon at Sea, 2021, with Richard King; Chicago University Press).  In 2019, Rutgers University Press released the 20th anniversary edition of my Poetics of Natural History in paperback, with new photographs by Rosamond Purcell. My biography-in-letters of the film actress Florence Deshon, co-written with film historian Cooper Graham, was published by Indiana University Press in 2020. I have just finished a book of creative non-fiction, "Borrowed Lives," and I am now working on a biography of the Americanist Daniel Aaron, whose literary executor I am. 

I regularly write book reviews for the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Monthly, and The Art Newspaper. With Christof Mauch (University of Munich, I co-edit the interdisciplinary book series “Transatlantic Perspectives” (Berghahn Books, NY). I am an elected board member of the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) and currently serve as the NBCC's Co-VP for Awards.

My homepage has links to my reviews. My teaching philosophy is best encapsulated in “Teaching with Special Collections,” Forging the Future of Special Collections, ed. Arnold Hirshon, Robert Jackson, and Melissa Hubbard, Chicago: American Library Association Publishing, 2016. 131-156.