Northern Illinois University
Department of English
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Professional Interests

• Socialism and American Literature
• Twentieth-Century American Poetry
• War Literature, especially of World War I
• The Railroad in Literature and Culture
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Upton Sinclair, W. E. B. Du Bois and Carl Sandburg
• Class, Race, Gender and Sexuality in U. S. Literature and Culture

Selected Publications

• “A Lost Lady at 100: Imperial Dreams, Indigenous Nightmare.” Willa Cather Review 64.3 (2023): 10-11. Special Issue: “Searching for A Lost Lady.” Ed. Ann Romines and Sarah Clere.
• “Socialism and Communism.” The Cambridge Companion to The Twentieth-Century American Novel and Politics. Ed. Bryan M. Santin. New York: Cambridge UP, 2023. 62-77.
• “US Poets on War and Peace: From the Spanish-American War to Afghanistan.” The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry and Politics Since 1900. Ed. Daniel Morris. New York: Cambridge UP, 2023. 118-134.
• “‘But Freebourne loved its steel’: American Great War Poetry, Modernity, and Mobilization.’”  First World War Studies, vol. 12, no. 3 (2021, but appearing in May 2022): 253-65.
• Co-Editor. A History of American Literature and Culture of the First World War. New York: Cambridge UP, 2021.  With Tim Dayton, Kansas State University
•   “Revolution: Winning the World, Losing the (Middle) Way.” A History of American Literature and Culture of the First World War. New York: Cambridge UP, 2021. 283-94.
• “The War: Event and Institution.” American Literature in Transition, 1910-1920. New York: Cambridge UP, 2018. 254-64.
• Editor. American Literature in Transition: 1910-1920.  New York: Cambridge UP, 2018.   
• “Men (and Women) of Iron: Labor, Power, and the Railroad in Willa Cather’s Novels.” Modern Fiction Studies 62.2 (2016): 236-271.
• American Socialist Triptych: The Literary-Political Work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Upton Sinclair, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012.
  “Ralph Chaplin,” Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 345, American Radical and Reform Writers, Series 2, ed. Hester L. Furey, 2009. 63-78.
• “How the Socialism of W. E. B. Du Bois Still Matters: Black Socialism in The Quest of the Silver Fleece – and Beyond.” With Julie K. Kraft. African American Review 41 (Spring 2007): 67-85.
• “Gilman’s Socialism as Background to Her Works.” In Approaches to Teaching “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and Herland, ed. Denise Knight and Cynthia J. Davis. New York: MLA, 2003.
• "A Rose by Any Other Name: Charlotte Perkins Stetson (Gilman) and the Case for American Reform Socialism." American Quarterly 55.4 (Dec. 2003): 603-34.
• Rendezvous with Death: American Poems of the Great War, ed. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2002.
• Partisans and Poets: The Political Work of American Poetry in the Great War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.