I did my graduate work at Stanford University where I wrote a dissertation on urban and suburban literature, with an emphasis on the shaping force of literary culture on the origins of modern, middle-class suburbia and its relation to the slums. (The Suburban Imagination: Aesthetics, Space, and Desire, in Nineteenth-Century British Literature).

I have taught at Stanford University, Santa Clara University (in Environmental Studies), and at the University of Santa Cruz's Dickens Project prior to coming to Berkeley.  

In addition to my work on urban culture, I am working on a second project which brings contemporary work in critical animal studies and ecocriticism to bear on our understanding of the Darwinian revolution and Victorian understandings of the human and the animal.

“The Infrastructural Uncanny—Oliver Twist in Suburbs and Slums,”  (Dickens Studies Annual, Volume 44, Summer 2013).

“Traffic Justice: Automobility, Roadkill and (Non)human Bystanders.” Environmental Studies Institute, Santa Clara University. May 18, 2012.  Invited talk.

No recent courses taught.