I received my BA in Literature/Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Asheville in 1993, my MA in English from Western Carolina University in 1995, and my Ph.D. in English from the University of South Carolina, Columbia, in 2000. The major area focus for my Ph.D. studies was on Colonial and 19th-Century American Literature, my minor area on Restoration and 18th-Century British Literature.
I wrote my dissertation on early American author Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) and his work as editor of and chief contributor to a periodical called The Literary Magazine, and American Register (1803-1807). Once settled into my position here at East Tennessee State University, I revised the dissertation for book publication with McFarland & Company, Publishers. The book Charles Brockden Brown and the Literary Magazine: Cultural Journalism in the Early American Republic was published in 2004.
I have published articles in such periodicals as Journal of the Short Story in English: Les Cahiers de la Nouvelle, English Language Notes, and The Explicator. I have contributed—or will soon contribute—entries to specialty encyclopedias dealing with John Steinbeck, Appalachia, and American poetry. I have made conference presentations on topics ranging from the Anne Hutchinson controversy in early Puritan New England to a course on popular music I taught in Fall 2003. My current scholarly work includes a couple of books, articles, and conference papers on such topics as 18th-century American poetry, country music lyricists, the farm in early American periodicals, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Native American literature.
Selected Conference Papers
Words and Music: Writing About Music and Song in the Composition Classroom