Degrees

• B.A. in English/Creative Writing, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2005)
• M.A. in English, Vanderbilt University (2006)

Research Area

• 19th and 20th Century American Literature; Literature of the U.S. South; questions of place, space, and relation in literature

Current Research

• "Faulkner’s Fiction: Édouard Glissant’s Faulkner, Mississippi"
• Community garden movement and food security

Current Courses

• Garden States: Literary Gardens and Human Relationships to the Natural World (Literature: Critical Reading and Critical Analysis, Spring 2008)
• Once Upon a Time: Fairytale, Myth, and the Powers of Narrative (Literature: Forms and Techniques, Fall 2007)
• Into the West: Literature and Landscapes of the American West (Literature: Forms and Techniques, Fall 2006-Spring 2007)

Current Positions

• Graduate Assistant Organizer, MSAX (beginning August 2008)
• English Graduate Student Association Teaching Liaison

Previous Positions

• English Graduate Student Association Vice President (Fall 2007-Spring 2008)
• Organizer, Prof. Jonathan Lamb's Mellon Seminar: "The Souls of Brute and Stupid Things" (May 2007)
• Co-organizer, Prof. Paul Young's Mini-Seminar, "Teaching Film to Undergraduates" (Spring 2007)
• English Graduate Student Association Social Co-Chair (Fall 2006-Spring 2007)
• Coordinator, VU English Department First Year Students' Conference (March 2006)
• Graduate Instructor (Fall 2006-Spring 2008)

Professional Societies

• Modern Language Association
• Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment

Professional Honors

• Rose Alley Press Achievement Award, Spring 2008
• Phi Beta Kappa, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2005
• Louis D. Rubin Prize for Fiction, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2005

Biography

Swamps, bogs, fens, heaths, quagmires, sloughs, wetlands, marshes, meshes, mires, morasses, muskegs, pocosins, prairie potholes, bottomlands, trembling sands, swales, backwaters...
Tarns...a bit of an exception, but every bit as alluring.

Miscellaneous

M. A. Thesis: "Tracking Down a Negro Legend": Authenticity and the Postmodern Tourist in Colson Whitehead's John Henry Days