Contact Information:
[email protected]
212-854-2114
Mailbox: Barnard 417

 Office: Barnard 408D
Office hours by appointment.
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Spring 2024
English BC3180y: American Literature, 1800-1870
English BC3193: Critical Writing

Fall 2020
English BC3179x:  American Literature to 1800
English BC3927: “A d–d mob of scribbling women”: Nineteenth-century American Women Writers (Senior Seminar)

Past Courses:
English BC3997x: “A d-d mob of scribbling women”: Nineteenth-century American Women Writers  (Fall 2014)
English BC3138x:  “A d-d mob of scribbling women”: Nineteenth-century American Women Writers
English BC 3997:  Reading and Writing Women in Colonial America (Fall 2012)
FYSB BC 1181: The American Supernatural (Spring 2011)
American Studies 3002y: Approaches to American Culture, 1607-1865 (Spring 1999)

Useful resources:
❧  Teaching Resources for the Pandemic
❧  useful links in American literature and culture
❧  Columbia Library reference tools
❧  Addall.com (new books / used books)
❧  Books in Print
❧  CLIO
❧  Early American Newspapers
❧  Early English Books Online
❧  Eighteenth Century Collections Online
❧  Evans Digital Edition
❧  JSTOR
❧  MLA Bibliography
❧  Oxford English Dictionary
❧  Project Muse
❧ Colonial North America at Harvard Library
❧  http://booksforchildren.pbworks.com
❧  Scrivener
❧  Trello
❧  Columbia Schedule of Classes

Current project:

“The word in it self”: Transparency and Substance in Early Quaker Language (book manuscript) explores the paradoxical complexities generated by early Quaker theories of simplicity in language. It explores the literary theory of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Friends, considering its impact on Quaker texts, on the political activity of eighteenth-century Quakers in the Pennsylvania Assembly, and on the broader American literary tradition, especially in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

Selected publications:

• • “Theology.” In A History of American Puritan Literature, ed. Kristina Bross and Abram Van Engen. Cambridge UP, 2020.
  • “Jesus loves your girl more than you do”: Marriage as Triangle in Evangelical  Romance and Puritan Narratives.” In Romance Fiction and American Culture: Love as the Practice of Freedom? ed. William A. Gleason and Eric Murphy Selinger. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2016. 323-346.
  • “Office Hours.” In A Passion for Getting it Right: Essays and Appreciations in Honor of Michael J. Colacurcio’s 50 Years of Teaching, ed. Carol M. Bensick. New York: Peter Lang, 2016. 221-2.
  • “Online Commonplace Book.” In The Pocket Instructor, Literature: 101 Exercises for the College Classroom, ed. Diana Fuss & William A. Gleason. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2016. 318-321.
  • “‘None Need Think Their Sympathy Wasted’: Reading Early American Books.” Common-Place 9.3 (April 2009).
  • “‘Bring Forth the Old Because of the New’: Early Americanists and Contemporary Culture.” Early American Literature 41.2 (2006): 369-375. (Response to the American Antiquarian Society’s 2005 conference on “Histories of Manuscript, Print, and Performance in America.”)
  • “The Conversion Narrative in Early America.” In A Companion to The Literatures of Colonial America: An Anthology, ed. Susan Castillo and Ivy Schweitzer. Malden, Massachusetts and London, England: Blackwell, 2005. 369-386.
  • “Spirit and Substance: John Woolman and ‘the Language of the Holy One.'” In The Tendering Presence: Essays on John Woolman, ed. Mike Heller. Wallingford, Pennsylvania: Pendle Hill P,  2003.
  • Opening Scripture: Bible Reading and Interpretive Authority in Puritan New England. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2003.
  • “Consecrating a Rebellion: Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Friedrich Strauss, and the Historical Jesus.” Journal of Unitarian Universalist History 24 (1997): 1-16.
  • “The Experience of Covenant Theology in George Herbert‘s The Temple.” The Journal of Religion 76.3 (July 1996): 383-401.