Education
- Ph.D., English Literature, University of Toronto
- M.A., English Literature, University of Western Ontario
- Hon. B.A., English Literature and History, University of Guelph
Teaching
- ENG1027F/G: The Storyteller’s Art I
- ENG1028F/G: The Storyteller’s Art II (Climate Change Fiction)
- ENG2299F/G: Critical Practice
- ENG2203F/G: Studies in Narrative Theory
- ENG3261F/G: The Afterlives of Freud: Psychoanalytical Theory & Literary Analysis in the Twenty-First Century
- ENG3348F/G: Topics in Restoration & Eighteenth-Century Literature: Affect, Ethics, Action: Eighteenth-Century Sentimentalism
- ENG4871F/G: (auto)affective (dis)order(s)
Research
Narrative theory; psychoanalytic theory and literature; queer theory and trans studies; climate change fiction; eighteenth-Century British and American literature; contemporary autotheory/life writing.
Selected Publications
- [Multiple entries on eighteenth-century hermit novels]. The Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, 1660-1820. Edited by April London (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
- “So You Want to Be a Hermit?: The Politics of Doing Nothing at All.” King’s Cosmos. Edited by Jonathan Geen, Ian Rae & Renée Soulodre-La France. (King’s University College, 2018). 8-11.
- “‘The Luxury of Solitude’: Conduct, Domestic Deliberation, and the Eighteenth-Century Female Recluse.” Cultures of Solitude: Loneliness-Limitation-Liberation. Edited by Ina Bergmann and Stephan Hippler (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2017). 79-97.
- “Ascetic Aesthetics.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 48.1 (fall 2014): 117-124.
- “The American Hermit and the British Castaway: Voluntary Retreat & Deliberative Democracy in Early American Culture.” Early American Literature 46.1 (spring 2011).
- “‘A Living Law to Himself and Others’: Daniel Defoe, Algernon Sidney, and the Politics of Self-Interest." Eighteenth-Century Fiction 22.3 (spring 2010): 415-442.
- “Withdrawing from the Nation: Regionalist Literature as Ascetic Practice in Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs.” Legacy 21.2 (2004): 210-228.
Selected Conference Papers
- “Reading as Oblivion: American Climate Change Fiction in the University Classroom.” What’s Going On?: The Canadian Association for American Studies Conference (24-26 October 2025).
- “Conduct, Domestic Deliberation, and Eighteenth-Century Female Reclusion.” The Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference (Kingston, ON, 26-28 October 2016).
- “Rethinking Ascetic Deferral in an Age of Deliberative Democracy.” Cultures of Solitude: Representations of Hermits and Recluses: An International and Interdisciplinary Conference (University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany, 30-31 July 2015).
- “‘Passionate Communities’: Sentimentalism and Ascetic Morality in the Writings of Charles Brockden Brown.” The Eighteenth Century: Influence of the Past, Presence of the Future (SCEDHS/CSECS__), McGill University, Montreal, QC (15-18 October 2008).