Academic Experience

Education

Publications

Books & Monographs:

• Alonzo "Old Block" Delano. Western Writers Series no. 169. Boise, ID: Boise State UP, 2007.
• Traces of Gold: California's Natural Resources and the Claim to Realism in Western American Literature. Studies in American Literary Realism & Naturalism. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2002.

Essays:

• "'With Powder Smoke and Profanity': Genre Conventions, Regional Identity, and the Palisade Gunfight Hoax," Regionalism and the Humanities, ed. Timothy R. Mahoney and Wendy Katz (forthcoming U of Nebraska P, 2008).
• "Late-19th-Century Literature," American Literary Scholarship: An Annual, 2005, ed. Gary S. Scharnhorst Duke UP, 2007): 263-88.
• “Introduction: Popular Entertainment and American Theater Prior to 1900,” Comparative Drama 40.4 (Winter 2006-07): 405-10. N.B. written as guest editor of this special issue.
• "Late-19th-Century Literature," American Literary Scholarship: An Annual, 2004, ed. David J. Nordloh (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2006): 271-93.
• "Resource Management," American History Through Literature, 1870-1920, eds. Tom Quirk and Gary Scharnhorst (New York: Scribners, 2006): 980-84.
• "Daisy Miller and Reception: Lessons Learned Teaching Henry James in Europe," Approaches to Teaching James's "Daisy Miller" and "The Turn of the Screw", eds. Kimberly Reed and Peter Beidler (New York: MLA, 2005): 88-93.
• "California: Mountains and Deserts," A Companion to the Regional Literatures of America, ed. Charles L. Crow (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003): 363-78.
• "Genre Fictions and Material Reconstructions of the Gold Rush: Writing the 'Real' California at the End of the Nineteenth Century," Sites of Memory in American Culture, ed. Udo J. Hebel (Heidelberg, Germany: C. Winter Universitätsverlag, 2003): 75-95.
• "John of the Mines: Muir's Picturesque Re-write of the Gold Rush," Western American Literature 34.3 (Fall 1999): 316-43.
• "'The Culture of the Northwest': A Newly Discovered Essay by Mary Austin," The North Dakota Quarterly 65.4 (Fall 1998): 80-90.
• "Sinclair Lewis, the Voice of Satire, and Mary Austin's Revolt from the Village," American Literary Realism, 1870-1910 30.1 (Fall 1997): 75-90.

Reference Entries:

• "Bret Harte," Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature, ed. Jay Parini (forthcoming 2003).
• La Maravilla, by Alfredo Véa, Jr. "Reading Suggestions for 'Not-to-Be-Missed Contemporary Fiction of the American West, 1990-2000.'" Western American Literature 35.4 (Winter 2001): 448.
• "David Graham Phillips," American National Biography, eds. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, 24 vols. (New York: Oxford UP, 1999) 17: 443-45.

Reviews:

• The Sagebrush Anthology: Literature from the Silver Age of the Old West, ed. By Lawrence I Berkove, American Literary Realism, 1870-1930 (forthcoming).
• Mark Twain and the American West, by Joseph L. Coulombe, Mark Twain Forum (24 March 2004) <http://www.twainweb.net/reviews/coulombe.html>.
• Five Fires: Race, Catastrophe, and the Shaping of California, by David Wyatt, Western American Literature (Summer 2003): 204-05.
• Roman Holidays: American Writers and Artists in Nineteenth-Century Italy, edited by Robert K. Martin and Leland S. Person, The Henry James Review 24.2 (Spring 2003): 193-95.
• Performing the American Frontier, 1870-1906, by Roger A. Hall, Comparative Drama 36.1,2 (Spring/Summer 2002): 216-19.
• Vintage Snapshots: The Fabrication of a Nation in the W.P.A. American Guide Series, by Petra Schindler-Carter, Amerikastudien/American Studies: A Quarterly 46.3 (Fall 2001): 473-74.
• "Reading Flannery O'Connor" [review essay], Mississippi Quarterly LIV.3 (Summer 2001): 399-403.
• Bret Harte: Prince and Pauper, by Axel Nissen, American Studies 42.2 (Summer 2001): 158-59.
• "Marking Twain, from Beginning to End" [review essay], Mississippi Quarterly LIII.2 (Spring 2000): 291-99.
• The Natural Contract, by Michel Serres, ISLE 4.1 (Fall 1997): 137-38.
• Charles & Kathleen Norris: The Courtship Year, ed. Richard Allan Davison, Western American Literature 31.2 (Summer 1996): 189-90.
• The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, English Language Notes 31.3 (March 1994): 83-4.

Teaching

Western Michigan University:

• Film Interpretation (ENGL 210); Literatures and Cultures of the United States (ENGL 222); Our Place in Nature (ENGL 311 -- Honors section); American Literature I, Beginnings to 1880s (ENGL 320); American Literature II, 1880s-present (ENGL 321); Native American Literature (ENGL 410); American Realism & Naturalism (ENGL 522); Women and the Early 20th-century West (ENGL 522); 1925: The Cultural Legacies of an Amerian Year (graduate seminar, ENGL 622); Thoreau's Walden (graduate seminar, ENGL 622); Introduction to Graduate Studies (ENGL 630).

Previous offerings:

• . . . at the University of Regensburg: The American Realist Novel (graduate seminar); The California Gold Rush (culture studies seminar); Literature and Popular Culture in the American 1920s; Visual and Literary Politics of the 1930s; American Documentary Filmmaking; Understanding Walden: Texts, Contexts, Reception, and Criticism (graduate seminar).
• . . . at the University of Oregon: Supermarket Fiction: Taking Popular Literature Seriously (Western, Romance, Detective, Science Fiction); Survey of American Literature, 1865 to present; British and American Modernism; Introduction to Shakespeare; Introduction to Literature: Fiction; Reading, Writing, Using the World Wide Web; College Composition III (Writing and Research Methodologies); College Composition II (Advanced Writing); College Composition I (Beginning Writing)

Academic
Honors and Awards

Invited Lectures

Selected Conference Presentations

Local Presentations

Western Michigan University:

• "Realism, Literature, and the California Gold Rush," Keynote Address, Winter Speakers Series, 4 Feb. 2002.

University of Oregon:
Colloquium Lectures:

• "Watered-down Thoughts: Mary Austin's California Realism," Mesa Verde 1998 Winter Colloquium Series, University of Oregon, February 1998.
• "What We Talk About When We Talk About Trees: Some Thoughts on a Literary History of Natural Resources," Mesa Verde 1996 Fall Colloquium Series ("Literature, Environment, and Culture"), University of Oregon, October 1996.

Annual UO Fall Composition Conference:

• 1997 "Integrating Harvest with The Shape of Reason."
• 1996 "Pedagogies of Argumentation."
• 1995 "Teaching Gage's The Shape of Reason" [session chair and panelist].
• 1994 "Collaborative Teaching."

Selected Academic Service

Departmental and University Responsibilities (WMU):

• WMU-AAUP Association Council Representative (Fall 2004 – present)
• Chair, Dept. Chair Search Committee, English (Fall 2005 – Spring 2006)
• Lee Honors College Advisory Committee (Fall 2004 – Spring 2006)
• Lee Honors College Late-Admissions Committee (Fall 2003 – Spring 2006)
• University Grade and Program Dismissal Appeals committee, WMU (Fall 2003 – Spring 2006)
• Faculty Senate, WMU (Spring 2001 – Spring 2004).
• Policy Committee, English Department, WMU (served as Chair, 2002-04).
• Programs & Speakers Committee, English Department, WMU (ongoing)
• Graduate Committee, English Department, WMU (Spring 2001 – Summer 2003)
• Chair, IT Committee, English Department, WMU.
• WMU Committee to establish an interdisciplinary film studies minor (2000-01).
• English Department webmaster (de facto; Spring 2001 – Spring 2006)

Professional Service:

• Co-President, Western Literature Association, 2007-08.
• Editorial Board, Western American Literature, Fall 2003 – present
• Executive Council, Western Literature Association (10/2000 - 10/2003).
• Editorial Board, The Platte Valley Review, Fall 2000 – 2005.
• Peer Reviewer, University of Utah Press, Broadview Press, Houghton Mifflin Co., Routledge.
• Judge, Don D. Walker Award for best article or essay, Western Literature Association, 2003.
• Judge, Thomas J. Lyon Award for best book-length study of western literature and culture, Western Literature Association, 2002.
• Executive Council, Western Literature Association (10/2000 - 10/2003).
• Editorial reader for Western American Literature.
• Editorial reader for The Michigan Academician.
• Selection Committee in the Humanities, Fulbright Kommission, German Program Unit (Berlin & Bonn), October 1999 -- conducted dossier evaluations and interviews of potential German graduate student Fulbright grantees to the United States.
• Transcriber, Henry D. Thoreau's Journal, for The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, March 1995 to Aug. 1999.
• Co-editor, Harvest: A Collection of Student Essays from the University of Oregon’s Composition Program (2nd edition). 1997 -- a textbook designed for and implemented by the University of Oregon's College Composition curriculum.
• Program Committee, International Conference on Native American Literature, UO, 1997.
• Founding Member, Mesaverde Colloquium Series, UO, 1995 to 1999
• Editor, Scriblerus II: A Newsletter of the Univ. of Oregon English Graduate Students, 1996 to 1998.

Memberships