Much of my work concentrates on the intersection between literature and religious practice in Renaissance literature and culture, in particular on the relationship between prayer, meditation, spiritual exercises, and poetry. I have published on religious and secular concepts of attention, on apocalypse as a literary and political figure, and on philosophy of history and comparative literature. My first book Death Be Not Proud: The Art of Holy Attention (Chicago, 2016) interprets John Donne's Holy Sonnets as exercises in attentiveness. Donne's role in the history of English as a discipline has also generated my current interest in questions of institutional history, especially in terms of the relationship between calling and bureaucracy. 

The majority of the courses I teach in the English Department focus on early modern literature, religion, and theater. At Berkeley, I serve on the boards of the Renaissance and Early Modern Studies Designated Emphasis (REMS) and the journal Representations. I am also co-director of the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion (BCSR).