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Over the years I’ve taught everything from Paradise Lost to Philip Roth. These days, at Maryland, I teach
lectures and seminars in 19th and 20th century American literature, and a graduate workshop on memoir.
A lecture asks the student to overhear the teacher talking to himself. Part of what is listened for is the
narrative being run through the material. My assigned course begins in 1865 and ends in 1987—from Lincoln
to Morrison. While there are lots of digressions along the way—into Mary Austin, Fitzgerald, Bishop—the
running subtext is slavery. This is the story behind the story, the secret history that my chosen list of writers
hides in plain sight.
In my smaller classes, I spend most of the time listening. These courses tend to be structured a little like an
AA meeting: I walk into the room, write a quote on the board, and then listen without speaking. The students
begin to talk about the reading for the day. Someone floats a statement; someone floats another one. But
because I’m not talking, what gets said sounds more like testimony than argument—no one is trying to impress
me or to “win” over somebody else. After a while I may come into it, quoting nice things said, giving a mini
lecture. The process assumes that students already have within them an understanding of what they need to
know.
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1970-1975 University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D. in English
1966-1970 Yale University, B.A. in English
1989- Professor, University of Maryland
1987-1989 Associate Professor, University of Maryland
1982-1987 Program Associate, The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy
1984-1985 Visiting Professor, Princeton University (on leave from the Virginia Foundation)
1975-1982 Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia
Prodigal Sons: A Study in Authorship and Authority, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980
The Fall Into Eden: Landscape and Imagination in California, Cambridge University Press, 1986
New Essays on Stei, Cambridge University Press, 1990
East of Eden (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics series), Introduction, Bibliography, and Notes 1992
Out of the Sixties: Storytelling and the Vietnam Generation, Cambridge University Press, 1993
Bret Harte, (Oxford World's Classics), Oxford University Press, 1995
Five Fires: Race, Catastrophe, and the Shaping of California, Addison-Wesley, 1997
Five Fires, Oxford University Press paperback edition, 1999
And The War Came, University of Wisconsin Press, 2004
"The Woman Jerusalem: Pictura Versus Poesis," Blake Studies, 1975
"Spelling Time: The Reader in Emerson's `Circles,'" American Literature, May 1976; reprinted in On
Emerson: The Best from American Literature, 1988
"Choosing in Frost," Frost: Centennial Essays II, ed. Jac Tharpe, University Press of Mississippi, 1976
"Hemingway's Uncanny Beginnings," The Georgia Review, Summer 1977
"Robert Penn Warren: The Critic as Artist," The Virginia Quarterly Review, Summer 1977
"Completing the Picture: Williams, Berryman, and `Spatial Form,'" Colby Library Quarterly, December 1977
"Frost and the Grammar of Motion," The Southern Review, Winter 1980
"The Hand of the Master," The Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 1980
"Star Wars and the Productions of Time," The Virginia Quarterly Review, Autumn 1982
"Falling and Returning: The Poetry of Gregory Orr," Pequod, 1983
"Faulkner and the Burdens of the Past," Faulkner: New Perspectives (Prentice Hall), 1983
"Norris and the Vertical," The Southern Review, Autumn 1983
"Muir and the Possession of Landscape," The Sewanee Review, Winter 1984
"Bloom, Freud, and `America,'" The Kenyon Review, Summer 1984
"Structure and Its Discontents: Reflections on English in America," Federation Reports, Special Issue, 1984
"The Fate of Rereading," The Kenyon Review, Spring 1986
Contributor to Introduction to Modern English and American Literature II: The Twentieth Century
(Annenberg/CPB Project), "Ernest Hemingway," 1989
"Snyder and the Curve of Return," The Virginia Quarterly Review, Autumn 1986; reprinted in Critical Essays
on Gary Snyder, 1990
"Hard Facts in the West: Beyond the American Sublime," The Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 1991
"Shepard's Split," South Atlantic Quarterly, Spring 1992
"Faulkner and the Reading Self," Faulkner and Psychology, University of Mississippi Press, 1994
"Faulkner=s Hundred," The Southern Review, 1997
"The Last Spring at Yale," The Virginia Quarterly Review, 1997
Commentaries for Robert Frost CD ROM, Holt Reinhart, 1998
AHemingway at Fifty,@ The Southern Review, 1999
AVoice and Place,@ Western American Literature, 1999
"The Last Spring at Yale," reprinted in Selected Essays from 75 Years of The Virginia Quarterly Review,
University Press of Virginia, 2000
AWorking The Field,@ essay-review of Stanley Plumly=s Selected Poems, The Southern Review, Autumn,
2000
AEastering,@ Western American Literature, 2001
ASteinbeck=s Light,@ The Southern Review, 2002
Review of Doubling & Incest/Repetition & Revenge (Irwin), The Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 1976
Review of Whitman's Journeys into Chaos (Black), The Romantic Sublime (Weiskel), The Georgia Review,
Spring 1977
Review of Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing (Poirier), The Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 1978
Review of Faulkner's Career (Stonum), The Virginia Quarterly Review, Autumn 1979
Review of Faulkner: The Transfiguration of Biography (Wittenberg), The Virginia Quarterly Review, Autumn
1980
Review of Witnesses to a Vanishing America (Mitchell), The Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 1982
Review of Distant Obligations: Modern American Writers and Foreign Causes (Duke), The Sewanee
Review, Fall 1984
Review of Along With Youth (Griffin) and The Young Hemingway (Reynolds), The Sewanee Review, Winter 198
Review of Stone Cottage (Longenbach), The Virginia Quarterly Review, Autumn 1988
Review of Scriptures for a New Generation (Beidler), South Atlantic Review, Summer 1995
Reviw of John Steinbeck: A Biography (Parini), Virginia Quarterly Review, Fall 1995
Review of The Literature of California (eds. Hicks, Houston, Kingston, Young), Virginia Quarterly Review,
Summer 2001
Review of Imagining Los Angeles (Fine), Western American Literature, 2003
Public Lectures and Readings
"Falling and Returning: The Poetry of Gregory Orr," University of Virginia, 1980
"Star Wars and the Productions of Time," Johns Hopkins University, 1980
"Muir and the Possession of Landscape," MLA 1980, Session on Autobiography and Biography: Evaluating
Criticism and Critical Approaches
"Muir and the Possession of Landscape," The Huntington Library, 1981
"Muir and the Possession of Landscape," University of California, Davis, 1983
"Structure and Its Discontents: Reflections on English in America," National Federation of State Humanities
Councils, 1983
"Bloom, Freud, and `America,'" American Studies Association, 1983
"Cowboys as Indians: The Body Language of Western Movies," American Studies Association, 1985
"Isak Dinesen and the Cost of Story," Luther College, 1987
"Isak Dinesen and the Cost of Story," Princeton, 1988
"Mordden's Mirror: Tales from Gay Manhattan," American Studies Association, 1988
Chair, panel on "Re-Visioning the Sixties," American Studies Association, 1989
"Lucas and Special Effects," New York University, 1989
"Overcoming Space: Toward a New Human Geography," UCLA, 1990
"Hard Facts in the West: Beyond the American Sublime," French Association of American Studies, Dourdan,
France, 1990
"Faulkner and the Talking Self," Faulkner Conference, Oxford Mississippi, 1991
"Out of the Sixties," Luther College, 1991
"The Generation of the Sixties", University of Messina, Sicily, 1994
"Out of the Sixties," University of Coimbra, Portugal, 1995
"Fear and Loathing in New Haven," University of Maryland, 1995
"Hemingway at Fifty," Distinguished Scholar-Teacher lecture, University of Maryland, 1999
AWriting The Grapes of Wrath, AUniversity of Virginia, 2002
Reading from And The War Came, AWriters Here and Now,@ UMD, 2004
Reading from And The War Came, New Dominion Book Shop, Charlottesville, Va., 2004
Reading from And The War Came, University of Virginia, 2004
Reading from And The War Came, Chapters Bookstore, Washington, D.C., 2005
AAfrican American Literature and the Canon,@ Roanoke College, 2005
Reading from And The War Came, Virginia Festival of the Book, 2005
Reading from And The War Came, Wilkes University, 2007
University of Virginia:
Chair, Lectures Committee
Director, Modern Studies
Birdwood Building Committee
University Admissions Committee
University of Maryland:
Chair Search Committee, Department of English, 1988
Tenure Committees for Martha Smith and Robert Levine, 1988; Thomas Moser and Jonathan Auerbach,1989
Departmental Lectures Committee, 1988-89
Graduate Placement Director, 1988-89
Departmental Teaching Committee, 1988-1990
Research Center Advisory Council, 1989
Member, History Department Review Committee, 1989
Associate Director of Graduate Studies, 1989-90
Director of Graduate Studies, 1990-1993
Chair, Promotion Committee for Linda Kauffman, 1990; Promotion Committee for Howard Norman, 1990;
Chair, Promotion Committee for Mark Turner, 1991; Promotion Committee for Carla Peterson, 1993.
APT Committee, College of Arts and Humanities, 1990-1993
Member, English Department Review Committee, 1993
Chair, American Studies Review Committee, 1994
APT Committee, University of Maryland, 1995
Departmental Personnel Committee, 1995-96
Chair, Promotion Committee for Martha Smith, 1996
Departmental Salary Committee, 1996-97
Promotion Committee, Kandice Chuh, 1998
Member, African-American Search Committee, 1998-99
Post-Tenure Faculty Review, Committee Chair, 1998
Salary Committee, 1998
Chair, Promotion Committee for Howard Norman, 1999
Mentor, TAs in American Literature
Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Selection Committee, 2000
PhD Admissions Committee, 2001
Chair, Promotion Committee for Kandice Chuh, 2001
Member, Chair Review Committee, 2002/member, Salary Committee, 2003
Member, Liz Arnold Promotion Committee, 2003
Member, Salary Committee, 2004
Ph.D. Admissions Committee, 2004
Ph.D. and MA Admissions Committee, 2005
Member, Salary Committee, 2005
Member, Brian Richardson Promotion Committee, 2005
Distinguished Scholar - Teacher Selection Committee, 2005
PhD Admissions Committee, 2006
PhD Admissions Committee, 2007
Member, Josh Weiner Promotion Committee, 2006
Elected to MLA Delegate Assembly in 1988 for Mid-Atlantic region
Outside tenure reviewer, University of Rhode Island; Texas A & M University; University of California, Davis;
Vanderbilt University; University of California, Los Angeles; Louisiana State University; University of Southern
California; University of California, Davis; University California, Davis; University of Alabama
Reader, University of Pennsylvania Press; Cambridge University Press; Duke University Press; American
Literary History; Johns Hopkins University Press
Advisory Editor, The Hopkins Review
Community Service:
Reviewer, NEH Panel on Museums, 1985
Reviewer, Virginia Center for the Humanities, 1990 and 1992
Reviewer, NEH Panel on State Programs, 1992
Consultant, San Diego County History Project, 1998-99
Independent Study:
John Henderson - Undergraduate
Natalie Froman - Graduate
Matt Lilienfeld - Undergraduate
Karen Karydes - Graduate
Honors Theses:
John Charles (reader)
Jo Jackson (reader)
Susan Kletter (director)
Isabel Galbraith (reader)
Mike Rosolio (director)
Alison Syring (director)
Elisa Washuta (reader)
M.A. Theses Directed:
Cynthia Cox (Davies) 1988
Brian Maney (Huey Long) 1988
John Mock (Hemingway) 1991
Eric Bond (Mormon narratives) 1991
Phyllis Jeffers (Black Power), 1996
Jill Colella (Vietnam War narrative), 1999
M.A./M.F.A. Projects:
Paulette Rayford (reader)
Allyson Fetterhoff (reader)
Natalie Froman (director)
Emily Dunn (reader)
Suri Saloma (reader)
Kara Candito (reader)
Kate Connors (director)
Eun-Nyoung Shin (director)
Maria Holovanic (reader)
Carisa Coburn (reader)
Merton Lee (reader)
Lauren Buckendorf (director)
Garth Graeper (reader)
Lisa Mihalich (reader)
Alice Sandosharaj (reader)
Jordan McMullin (reader)
Aaron Carlson (director)
Tripp Fulton (reader)
Mark Lee Keats (reader)
Drew Tangaro (reader)
Jessica Hamilton (director)
Dissertations Directed:
Renée Curry (Bishop) 1991
Larry Kuhar (Pynchon) 1993
Susan Rosen (Pacific Northwest) 1994
Cathy Barks (American Autobiography) 1995
Stacey Coyle (American Poetry) 1996
Tara Hart (Austin, Cather, Stein) 1996
Ann Steinecke (Modern novel) 1996
Shelley Jackson (Southern Literature) 2000
Phillip Beard (Fitzgerald) 2000
Steve Canaday (Shepard)
Matt Hill (Vietnam)
Matt Elliott (Los Angeles)
Elisa Warford (California)
Simone Drake (African Diaspora)
In progress:
Megan Monserez (Disability Studies)
Deborah Bailin (The Human AAnimal@)
Helen DeVinney (Letters)
Caroline Egan (Masculinity)
Dissertation Committees:
Joan Burke
Valerie Macys
Mary Murtha
Mary McManus
Fran Nichol
Megan Taylor
Neil Davison
Joy Pohl
William Conlogue
Annette Debo
Lee Burcham
Shelley Sperry (History)
Craig Swanson (History)
Devin Orgeron
Marsha Gordon
Ann Kaufman
Debbie Werrlein
Kevin Jessua
David Eubanks
Allyson Fetterhoff
In progress:
Mark Forrester
Pat Lissner
Dina Longitano
Kathy MacDonald
Magdelyn Hammond
Maria Ramos
Lisa Rhody
Dwan Henderson
Chris Hale
Emily Dagger
Laura Williams
David Adams
Joanna Beatty
Sarah Hamilton
Michael Rosenberg
Keiko Avai
Alice Sandosharaj
Survey of English Poetry
Twentieth-Century American Literature (lecture course)
Twentieth-Century British Literature (lecture course)
Emerson and the Twentieth Century
The 1920s (graduate)
The American West (graduate and undergraduate)
American Literature from the Civil War to World War I (lecture course)
The Romantic Sublime: Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, Yeats, and Stevens
The Short Story
Modern Poetry
Literature and Culture of the Sixties
Contemporary Literature
The Fallacy Fallacy: Literary Theory in the 1970s (graduate)
Hemingway and Frost (graduate)
Wordsworth and Frost (graduate)
Hemingway and Walker
The Generation of the Sixties (graduate)
Constructing California History (graduate)
Dissertation Workshop
Reading Race, Reading Region
301
Creative Nonfiction (graduate)
Faulkner and Morrison
Engl 433 (large lecture)
Engl 222 (large lecture)
Welty and Roth
Twentieth-Century Fiction
NEH Summer Stipend, 1980
Research Fellowship, Huntington Library, 1980
UVA Sesquicentennial Fellowship, 1981-82
Research Fellowship, Huntington Library, 1981
Phi Beta Kappa Book Prize, University of Virginia (for The Fall into Eden), 1987
GRB Summer Research Award, University of Maryland, 1988
Research Fellowship, Huntington Library, 1995
GRB Semester Research Award, University of Maryland, 1996
Distinguished-Scholar Teacher, University of Maryland, 1998-99
University of Maryland CAPA Award, 2002
GRB Semester Research Award, University of Maryland, 2006
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