Biography
I joined the Department of English at Western Oregon University in fall 1999. Since 2008 I have also served as the director of WOU’s Honors Program. Founded in 1856, Western Oregon University is a public liberal arts college with an enrollment of approximately 2750 undergraduate students.
As honors program director, I oversee all student recruitment and retention initiatives and coordinate the interdisciplinary honors curriculum, among other duties. The program comprises the top three percent of WOU’s undergraduate population.
As literature professor, I specialize in twentieth-century English and Irish literature, especially fiction of the post-World War II period. I also teach classes in broader literary history, critical theory, and film.
My scholarly projects are oriented to both general and specialized audiences. Major projects include a book, Father and Son: Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, and the British Novel Since 1950 (University of Wisconsin, 2003 & 2005) as well as an edited collection, Martin Amis: Postmodernism and Beyond (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). An 80,000 word novel, Flight, remains unpublished but was perhaps my most meaningful endeavor.
More recently, I have begun writing a book on Irish traumatic spaces and am also under contract to edit the Cambridge Companion to Martin Amis, forthcoming in 2026.
I also oversee the Martin Amis Web, the authoritative digital archive for that author. In 2012, it was archived by the British Library as a site of scholarly importance. Unfortunately, it was damaged by a server upgrade and is being rebuilt for a late-2024 relaunch.
Select Grants and Awards
- Faculty Advisor of the Year, NACADA (national award, 2016), and Western Oregon University (campus award, 2014)
- Invited Fellow, Institute for Study Abroad Ireland, 2015. Ireland and Northern Ireland locations: Dublin, Meath, Donegal, Fermanagh, Ballyshannon, Sligo, Leitrim, Derry City, Bundoran
- Invited Fellow, Canadian Studies Institute, 2009. Alberta Province locations: Calgary, Banff Centre, Athabasca Glacier, Ice Fields Parkway, Edmonton, Fort McMurray Oil Sands, DrumHeller, Lethbridge
- Mario & Alma Pastega Award for Excellence in Scholarship, Western Oregon University, 2007
- Travel Research Grants: Dublin, Cork, and Galway, Ireland | Belfast, Northern Ireland | London, England | Huntington Library, California | Thomas Merton Center and the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky