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 An 80,000 word novel, Flight, remains unpublished but was perhaps my most meaningful endeavor.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. Fourteen scholars from five different countries are participating in this project.
Until 2022, I also oversaw 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, but unfortunately it was permanently damaged by a server upgrade.
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