Faculty Profile

Current Position

Professor

Past President, Western Literature Association

Treasurer, Western Literature Association

Courses

At the University of Montana: 

Spring 2016: Film 484: Directors: Wes Anderson

Fall 2015:        Lit 521: The Elemental West

At the University of Toulouse:
Spring 2014:        AN 0013: Film Analysis
            D 242: The Elemental West (Masters class)

Fall 2014:        Lit 500: Introduction to Graduate Studies

Fall 2013:        Lit 521: Rethinking the West as Region

Spring 2013:        Lit 494: Capstone Seminar: Theories and Literatures of Place

Fall 2012        Lit 373: Literature and the Environment

Fall 2011:  Lit 521:  The Elemental West

Spring 2011:  Lit 494: Capstone: Imagining Sustainability in American Culture

                      Lit 342: Montana Writers

Fall 2010:  ENLT 521: The Literary West and Historical Consciousness

Education

A.B. Occidental College

Ph.D. SUNY Buffalo

Field of Study

Western American Studies, Literature of Place, Literature and the Environment, 19th, 20th, and 21st century American Literature and Culture

Selected Publications

"Imagining the Rocky Mountain Region,"  in The Cambridge History of Western American Literature, ed. Susan Kollin, Cambridge University Press, 2015. 

“Place as History: Narrating the Social and Environmental Legacies of the King Ranch,” Miranda [Online], 11 | 2015. URL : http://miranda.revues.org/6936.
 
“Making California's Towns and Small Cities Visible in the 21st Century,” in The Cambridge Companion to California Literature, ed. by Blake Allmendinger, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2015, 358-370. 

“Doomed Developments in the Desert: Re-reading the American Family in a Time of ‘Cruel Optimism,’” in Affective Landscapes in Literature, Art, and Everyday Life, ed. Christine Berberich, Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Press, 2015, 85-97.

"The In-betweenness of Home: The Advocacy of Judy Blunt and Paul Zarzkyski," in These Living Songs: Reading Montana Poetry, eds. Lisa Simon and Brady Harrison, Missoula: University of Montana Press, 2014, 253-267.

“Small Towns in the American West as Affective Landscapes: The Example of Wickenburg, Arizona,” in A Contested West: New Readings of Place in Western American Literature, eds. Martin Simonson and David Rio, London: Portal Editions, 2013, 23-41. 

"Framing Class in the Rural West: Cowboys, Double-Wides, and McMansions," in A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American West, Ed. Nicolas Witschi, Oxford: Blackwell, 2011.

"Home on the Range: Montana Romance Novels and Geographies of Hope," in All Our Stories are Here, Ed. Brady Harrison, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

"Writing Water in the West: Reclaiming the Language of Reclamation," in The Bureau of Reclamation: History Essays from the Centennial Symposium, Ed. Brit Stroey, Denver: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, 2008.

"The Romance of Ranching, or Selling Place-Based Fantasies in/of the West," in Postwestern Cultures: Literature, Theory, Space, Ed. Susan Kollin, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007.

Home Department

Department of English 

Area of Expertise

Literature and the Environment; Literature of Place; Nineteenth through Twenty-first Century American Literature and Culture; Western American Studies

Teaching Experience

Visiting Professor, University of Toulouse

Associate Professor, Univeristy of Montana

Associate Professor, University of Rhode Island

Assistant Professor, University of Rhode Island

Assistant Professor, University of Montana

Lecturer, Clark University

Visiting Lecturer, WPI

Teaching Fellow, SUNY-Buffalo

International Experience

In 2014 I taught on exchange at the University of Toulouse.

In 2010 I presented lectures in the Basque country of Spain as the guest of the U.S. Embassy.

Affiliations

Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), American Studies Association, Center for Great Plains Studies, Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, Phi Beta Kappa, Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publication (SHARP), Western Literature Association