Department of English

Teaching Interests

I teach courses in 19th and 20th century American literature, American drama, and early modernism. I tend to emphasize cultural and historical approaches in my courses and usually include both canonical and non-canonical works. Classes tend to run on a Socratic discussion model.  I rarely lecture; instead I ask questions designed to enable students to read a work closely and carefully to uncover the craft involved in the composition of a work.  My courses usually require students to write papers based on library research. I often ask students to do presentations of some sort--from reading about a work and presenting the ideas to the class, to leading discussion, to working collaboratively with others.

Research

• American literary naturalism and realism: writers such as Hamlin Garland, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Stephen Crane, Kate Chopin, and so forth.

• American drama, especially melodrama and early twentieth-century little theaters: Eugene O'Neill, Susan Glaspell, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and lots of now-forgotten theatrical troupes and even more forgotten playwrights who wrote plays hardly anyone remembers.

Recent work

• Hamlin Garland.  I've had a several-year obsession with realist and literary/cultural chronicler Hamlin Garland, whose best-known works are Main-Travelled Roads (1891) and his autobiography, A Son of the Middle Border (1917).  In 1998 I published the Selected Letters of Hamlin Garland (University of Nebraska Press, 1998), co-edited with Joseph B. McCullough, and in 2005 an edition of his stories about the American Indian entitled The Book of the American Indian, with 35 illustrations by Frederic Remington, as well as an edition of his New Woman novel, Rose of Dutcher's Coolly.  I have recently completed a new biography of this once world-famous writer.  For those who want to know more about Garland, visit my Hamlin Garland site.
  
  

• Theodore Dreiser.  I became interested in this pioneering naturalist (Sister Carrie, 1900; An American Tragedy, 1925) through his little known plays, a new edition of which was published in May 2000 as The Collected Plays of Theodore Dreiser, co-edited with Frederic E. Rusch. The UNCW English Department publishes Studies in American Naturalism, an international scholarly journal sponsored by the Dreiser Society and devoted to American literary naturalism, broadly conceived.  At present, I am co-editor of the journal.  Learn more about Studies in American Naturalism
  
  For further information:

• The International Theodore Dreiser Society
• The Hamlin Garland Society
• The Hamlin Garland Site
• Studies in American Naturalism

• McTeague's Tooth. About the giant golden molar hanging in my office.

Books

Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008. 

Forthcoming from Whitston Publishing in spring 2008.

Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005

Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005

Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003

Troy, NY: Whitston Publishing, 2000

Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000

Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998

Albany, NY: Whitston Publishing, 1998

Madison, IN: Brownstone Books, 1984; rpt. Borgo Press, 1985

Selected Articles

Introduction.  A Son of the Middle Border.  By Hamlin Garland.  St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2007.  vii-xvii.

Introduction.  A Daughter of the Middle Border.  By Hamlin Garland.  St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2007.  ix-xix.

"Why Hamlin Garland Left the Main-Travelled Road."  Studies in American Naturalism 1 (2006): 70-89.

"'I am as ever your disciple': The Friendship of Hamlin Garland and W. D. Howells."  Papers on Language and Literature 42 (2006): 264-90.

"Clouted by Reviewers: The Texts of Garland's Rose of Dutcher's Coolly."  Documentary Editing 27.2 (2005): 71-81.

"Prospecting for Health: Hamlin Garland’s Klondike Adventures." American Literary Realism 35.1 (2002): 72-92.

"Hamlin Garland: A Bibliography (1896-1940)." Bulletin of Bibliography 54 (1997): 11-20.

"Hamlin Garland and the 'Illegitimacy Bill' of 1913." American Literary Realism 29:1 (1996): 78-88.

"Uplifting the Stage: Hamlin Garland and the Chicago Theater Society." Journal of American Drama and Theatre 8:1 (1996): 1-17.

"Dreiser's 'The Girl in the Coffin' in the Little Theater." Dreiser Studies 21:1 (1994): 31-50.

"Melodramatist of the Middle Border: Hamlin Garland's Early Work Reconsidered." Studies in American Fiction 21 (1993): 153-69.

"Expressionism Takes the Stage: Dreiser's 'Laughing Gas.'" Journal of American Drama and Theatre 4:1 (1992): 5-22.

"Portrait of a Professional: The Plays of Jack London." American Literary Realism 20:2 (1988): 65-84.

"Georgia Scenes: The Satiric Artistry of Augustus Baldwin Longstreet." Mississippi Quarterly 41:1 (1987-1988): 21-37.

"Raymond Chandler: A Critical and Biographical Bibliography." Clues: A Journal of Detection 6:2 (1985): 61-72.

"C. W. Sughrue's Whiskey Visions." Modern Fiction Studies 29 (1983): 545-55.