I work at the crossroads of literature, philosophy, and the arts. My work explores how literature and art illuminate ways we live—how they help us think and understand the world and offer much more than fictions. I am interested in the varied ways that literature takes up and speaks to philosophical questions, especially questions about personhood and human identity. My book, What We Are in Literature and Art (forthcoming 2025), accordingly, is an experiment in philosophical reading.
My intellectual interests and my courses focus on the relationship between literature and philosophy, aesthetics, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century literatures, especially Romantic and Modern. My published work focuses on literature and ethics; ordinary language philosophy; literature and everyday life; gender and sexuality; and philosophical approaches to literature, art, and film. I have recently published essays on Ludwig Wittgenstein (Cambridge Studies in Literature and Philosophy), Jane Austen (Modern Language Association’s Teaching World Literature), Emily Dickinson (Oxford Studies in Philosophy and Literature and The Norton Sampler), and William Wordsworth (nonsite.org). Work in progress includes an article on the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks, an essay entitled "Women and the Struggle to Think," and a larger project, Arts of the Ordinary, about literature and forms of philosophy in the nineteenth century.
I have been happily teaching for twenty years. Before coming to Berkeley, I served on the faculty in the English departments at Rhode Island College, Boston University, and Florida Atlantic University. I was educated in two committedly interdisciplinary programs: the UC San Diego Literature Department (B.A., 1998) and the Program in Literature at Duke University (Ph.D., 2007).
My interests expand every day. I try to grate against the requirement to specialize as responsibly as possible. Outside of the classroom, I love to garden and go to the movies.
