A collection of essays, Turns of Event: Nineteenth-Century American Literary Studies in Motion, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2016. Contributors include Monique Allewaert, Ralph Bauer, Martin Brückner, Michelle Burnham, Christopher Castiglia, Sean Goudie, Meredith McGill, and Geoffrey Sanborn. Follow Turns of Event on Facebook or Tumblr.
In The View from the Masthead (2008), the first book to study the literary culture of sailors, I explore the simultaneity of labor and contemplation in antebellum American sea narratives, as well as the maritime epistemology I call the “sea eye.” The book won the John Garner Maritime Research Award.
My scholarly edition of William Ray’s Barbary captivity narrative Horrors of Slavery (2008) brings to light a crucial episode in the early history of American relations with Islamic states.
