Education:

• Ph.D. in English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2011

Minor in Gender and Women’s Studies

• M.A.  English Literature, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2005
• B.A. with Distinction, in cursu honorum, English and Philosophy, Fordham University, 2003

Publications

• “Disability in Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction.” Interdisciplinary Journal of the Dedicated  Semester 2 (2011). Web.

In Progress 

• Remaking American Catholic Fiction, 1845-1965

Selected Presentations

• “Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace and Postmodern Agency,” Saint Louis University Library Associates, May 2017.
• “Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale as Slave Narrative,” Saint Louis University Library Associates, July 2017.
• “Harry Sylvester and the Radical Catholic Novel,” Midwest Modern Language Association Convention, Kansas City, MO, November 2018
• “Kathleen Norris and the Sexual Politics of Catholic Popular Modernism,” Midwest Modern Language Association Convention, St. Louis, MO, November 2016.
• Panel Organizer and Chair, “Religion and Secular Culture in American Literature.” Midwest
• Modern Language Association Convention, St. Louis, MO, November 2016.
• “Maurice Egan’s The Disappearance of John Longworthy and the Rise of Catholic Realism,”
• American Literature Association Symposium: The City and American Literature, New Orleans, LA, 2015.
• Symposium organizer and moderator.  “Obligations of Justice and Love: A Symposium on the 50^th Anniversary of Gaudium et Spes.”  Fontbonne University, 2014.
• “Tales of the Cloister, Tales of the City: Elizabeth Jordan’s Catholic Realism,” Society for the Study of American Women Writers, Denver, CO, 2012.
• “‘A Woman’s Book’: Dorothy Day’s On Pilgrimage and the Politics of Catholic Domesticity at Mid-Century.” The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900,     Louisville, KY, 2012.
• Panel Organizer. “Sacred Journeys, Imagined Places: Pilgrimage and American Literature.” The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900, Louisville, KY, 2012.
• “‘Vain Reading’: Mary Anne Sadlier’s Bessy Conway and the Development of Catholic Sentimentality,” Society for the Study of American Women Writers, Philadelphia, PA, 2009.
• “The Body of Christ: Flannery O’Connor’s Theology of the Body and the Politics of Catholic Authorship,” The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900,  Louisville, KY, 2009.
• Panel Organizer and Chair “Politicizing Religion: A New Politics for the Twentieth Century,” The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900, Louisville, KY, 2009.

Courses Taught

ENG101: Composition I

• ENG102: Composition II
• ENG120: Introduction to Literature
• INT 105: Culture and the Common Good: First-Year Seminar
• ENG220: Introduction to Women’s Literature
• ENG200: Introduction to Literary Studies
• ENG260: The American Literary Tradition to 1865
• ENG261:The American Literary Tradition Since 1865
• ENG 381: The Age of Jackson
• ENG 363: Religion and Literature: Catholic Literature
• ENG337: The American Literary Renaissance
• ENG370: Literary Theory
• ENG381: American Science Fiction
• ENG383: The Short Story
• ENG496: Senior Thesis