American Literature and Culture, with special expertise in the novel and in the interplay of religion, ethnicity, and the media arts

U.S. literature
film, the visual arts, popular music
religion and ethnicity

Duke University

Frances Hill Fox Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies, English Dept., 2011 - present

Professor, English Dept., 2005 - present

Associate Professor with tenure, English, 1995-present

Assistant Professor, English, 1988-1995

University of Geneva, Switzerland

Assistant (teaching fellowship), English, 1986-1988

NEH Summer Stipend, tenured faculty division, for "Joseph Stella's Trans-Atlantic Imagination: Italian Catholicism, the American City, and Modernist Art," Summer 1998
Bass Professorship, Duke University, July, 2011
Alumni Association Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award, October, 2010
"Introduction" to Ethnic Passages, January 2009
American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation, August 2006
H.O.P.E. Award for ExemplaryTeaching, Duke University Residential Life, April, 2006
Robert B. Cox Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, Duke University, May 2001
Sabbatical Research Leave, Duke University, Fall 1996; Spring 2001
Junior Faculty Research Leave, Duke University, Fall 1991
Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professorship, Duke University, 1991-1992
USIA Teaching Fellow, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain, May 1990
Duke Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award Nominee, 1990, 1991, 1994-6, 1998, and others
Theron Rockwell Field Prize, Yale University, May 1989
Garner Fellowship in the Humanities, Yale University, 1979-1984
Valedictorian, Amherst College, 1979
George A. Plimpton Postgraduate Fellowship, Amherst College, 1979
George Rogers Taylor Prize for Outstanding Senior Thesis, Amherst College, 1979
Marshall Scholarship Finalist, 1979
Phi Beta Kappa, Amherst College, 1978
The Knox Cup, St. Paul's School, Concord, NH, 1975