- Professor, English
- Professor, Liberal Studies
- Professor, Film Studies
- Professor, American Studies
- Professor, Biography and Memoir
Research Interests
- American Literature and Culture, 1845 to the present
- popular genres in literature (for example, detective fiction, science fiction, horror, romance)
- media studies (particularly film, popular music, and broadcasting)
- biography
- ethnicity in American culture
- the literature of New York City
- cultural studies and cultural theory
Education
- Ph.D., History of American Civilization, Harvard University.
Selected Publications:
- “Scenes from a Disagreement: The Novel vs. the Moving Image, 1940-2020” and “’What Made You Give a Shit?’: Clockers (1992) vs. Clockers (1995),” in The Oxford History of the Novel In English, Volume 8: American Fiction since 1940, ed. Cyrus R. K. Patell and Deborah Lindsay Williams. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming in 2019.
- Bruce Springsteen and the Promise of Rock 'n' Roll. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2012 (US & UK; published in Australia by John Wiley & Sons). Expanded ed, 2013 Translated into Norwegian by Tom Thorsteinson, as Bruce Springsteen et liv med rock 'n' roll (Oslo: Libretto Forlag, 2013). Translated into Czech by Michal Bystrov as Bruce Springsteen neni to jen rock ‘n’ roll (Prague: Galen Publishing, 2015).
- "Lost." In David Lavery, ed., The Essential Cult Television Reader Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2010. 149-158.
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"One Shining Second: Mythic Chicago and Turn-of-the-Twentieth Century America." Journal of Urban History.35.6 (2009): 895-902.
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"The Neverending Series: The Indiana Jones Chronicles and the Past/Present/Future of Mass Media Narrative." In David Lavery and Angela Hague, eds. Teleparody: Predicting/Preventing the Television Theory of Tomorrow. London: Wallflower Press, 2002. 159-72.
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"The Peaks and Valleys of Serial Creativity: What Happened to/on Twin Peaks." In David Lavery, ed. Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995. 30-50.
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Modern Lives: A Cultural Re-Reading of "The Lost Generation". West Lafayette, IN: Purdue UP, 1996.
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"Four Faces of The Confidence-Man: An Academic Blind Man's Zoo." ESQ 38 (1993): 133-160.
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"The 'Wholeness' of the Whale: Melville, Matthiessen, and the Semiotics of Critical Revisionism." Arizona Quarterly 48.3 (1992): 27-58.
