About

Teaching Philosophy:

I believe the most effective learning environment is one in which students and teachers work together as peers, exploring subjects of historical and contemporary importance in ways that enhance our knowledge, challenge our critical and theoretical perspectives, and sharpen our skills as readers and writers. My role in part is to share my own knowledge with my students, but more importantly, by facilitating open, free, and spirited discussion to challenge each of us to think critically about our core beliefs and assumptions.

Degrees

• BA, University of California, Santa Cruz (1975)
• MA, Univeristy of California, Berkeley (1976)
• PhD, University of California, Santa Cruz (1981)

Program Areas

• Twentieth-Century Literature
• Literary and Critical Theory
• Globalization and Cultural Theory
• Comparative Literature of the Americas
• Modernism and Modernity
• Border Studies
• Disciplinary Change

Selected Publications

Recent:

• "Junot Diaz Redefines Macho" (Interview with Junot Diaz). In These Times, April 14, 2008.
• "The Post-Post Colonial Condition: Globalization and Historical Allegory in Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke." Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, Vol. 36. 1-2, January-April 05 (published Fall 2006).
• "Fated to Unoriginality: The Politics of Mimicry in Derek Walcott’s Omeros." Callaloo, vol. 29, no. 2, Summer 2006.
• "Locating Disciplinary Change: The Afterlives of Area and International Studies in the Age of Globalization." American Literary History, vol. 18, no. 1, January 2006 (Oxford UP).

Books:

• Global Matters: The Transnational Turn in Literary Studies (Cornell UP, 2010).
• Contingency Blues: The Search for Foundations in American Criticism (U of Wisconsin Press, 1997).

Work-in-Progress

• Monograph on the future of English as an academic discipline in the 21st century.