I have worked at Royal Holloway since 1995; before that I taught at the University of Sheffield for six years, at University College Cork, and at University College London, where I did my graduate work.  My BA and MA were at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

My main research areas are Modernism, American literature, literature and technology, the body (including such areas as sexology, bodily reform, cinema, and sound); and the poetry of Thomas Hardy.  I have recently completed a book on slavery as cultural metaphor, The Logic of Slavery: Debt, Technology and Pain in American Literature, for CUP (early sample here|). I also have a long-term project on the literature and culture of risk and disaster from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries.  A full list of publications is here.

I have supervised 16 research degrees to successful completion, and currently supervise eight PhD students. Recent areas of supervision include lesbianism modernism, African-American literature, Agee, 9/11 fiction, Kathy Acker, and Gertrude Stein.

I am director of the MA in Literatures of Modernity| and am happy to answer any inquiries on the MA or on supervision.

Undergraduate courses

EN3303 African-American Literature|
EN3316 Odysseus' Scar|
EN2321 Dark Reform|

MA courses

Modernism, Modernity & History (old version)|
Technologies of Writing|

London Modernism Seminar

British Association for Modernist Studies

British Association for American Studies