WELCOME
Thank you for visiting! I am a professor of eighteenth-century British and transnational literature and culture at California State University, Northridge.
Learn more about my teaching and research by using the buttons above or by consulting details below. You can find my contact information on my Faculty Information page, linked above.
Book Projects
Reading Jane Austen: An Introduction
Routledge, August 2026
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This volume captures the dynamic range of scholarly, popular, and pedagogical conversations that characterize contemporary Austen studies as a vibrant part of the broader Austen universe. Organized around historically oriented models of reading Austen’s works—re-evaluating the past, considering the present, and imagining the future—Reading Jane Austen includes eight new interdisciplinary essays that show us why we continue to find Austen’s relevance in our contemporary moment, along with a collaborative, conversational conclusion. The goal of the volume is to provide an accessible, concise, and comprehensive set of tools, resources, and models that empower readers to accept the invitation to join in the ongoing critical conversation about Austen.
Histories of Science: Natural Philosophy in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World
Co-edited with David Alff
University of Virginia Press, 2025
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Bringing together eighteen humanities scholars to discuss the representation, reception, and application of natural philosophy in the Atlantic world, Histories of Science shows how different
forms of media communicated scientific breakthroughs during the long eighteenth century. Focusing on descriptions of scientific discoveries in popular print, the collection coheres in its shared questions of methodology, historicity, and ethics. Histories of Science expands our record of the past, our understanding of the present, and our ability to imagine the future.
Engaging the Age of Jane Austen: Public Humanities in Practice
Co-authored with Bridget Draxler
University of Iowa Press, 2018
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This book explores how literary scholars of the eighteenth century can engage students and the public through teaching and research. By discussing case studies in libraries, museums, archives, literacy centers, and digital spaces, we argue that considering multiple approaches to public space—including how the university functions as and alongside other community spaces—can help forge a strong connection between the study of eighteenth-century literature and culture and twenty-first-century issues. In so doing, we suggest, people from within and beyond the university gates can engage with important intellectual traditions and ethical questions that are grounded in eighteenth-century studies.
recent community-engaged projects
Blank Spaces in the CSUN
University Library Archives:
An NEH HSI-Funded Project
Inspired by Saidiya Hartman's concept of "Blank Spaces," through this project, students and community members collaborate to document and record underrepresented historical narratives about people of color held in the CSUN archives. Participants from CSUN, UCSB, Pasadena and Pierce Community Colleges, Granada Hills Charter HS, and the West Valley LAPL offer new perspectives on how to preserve, remediate metadata through antiracist praxis, and disseminate historical narratives in ethical ways, helping us better understand local national histories. ​