Biography

I was born and raised in Los Angeles and did my undergraduate work at UCLA and the University of California, Santa Cruz.  I received my MA in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and my doctorate in literature in 1980 from the University of California, Santa Cruz. I have taught at Caltech, Emory University, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Chicago. I  have been a member of the faculty in Loyola’s English department since 1985.  From 2000-2002 I served as President of Loyola's Chapter of the American Association of University Professors.  I served as Chair of Loyola's Committee on Faculty Appointments from 2002-2003, and as Chair of the Faculty Affairs University Policy Committee from 2003-2004. I served the English Department as Graduate Programs Director from 1990-1994, and as Assistant Chair from 1996-1999. In 1998 I was chosen as Graduate Faculty Member of the Year.

My areas of specialization include modern and contemporary literature and theory, cultural theory, visual culture, and the relationship between literature and globalization. My books include Being in the Text: Self-Representation from Wordsworth to Roland Barthes (Cornell, 1984), The Selected Correspondence of Kenneth Burke and Malcolm Cowley (Viking, 1998, nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in biography), and Contingency Blues: The Search for Foundations in American Criticism (U. of Wisconsin Press, 1997). My essays on literary and cultural theory, modern and contemporary literature, globalization, and border studies have appeared in academic journals including PMLA, Callaloo, Cultural Critique, and Modern Fiction Studies.  My interview with the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Junot Diaz appeared in March of 2008 in In These Times. My next book, tentatively titled Globalization and the Transnational Turn in Literary Studies, is forthcoming next year from Cornell UP.