My current research interests revolve around American literary history, canon formation, and transnationalism, exploring the relationship between American literature and various myths of national and cultural origin. My dissertation, Origins and Orthodoxy: Literary Textbooks and American History, examines how anthologies of American literature treat American history. My current scholarly projects include the following:

• Lincoln and Stowe - My upcoming article in the Winter 2009 issue of the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association investigates the apocryphal origins of Lincoln's famous greeting of Harriet Beecher Stowe

• Briton Hammon - The first African American to publish a work of literature in North America wrote an uncharacteristic captivity narrative that included an unusual story about being captured by Indians in Southern Florida in 1747. Who were these Indians and why did they attack Hammon and his shipwrecked crewmates? An article just accepted for publication in the journal Native South explores this question.

• Native American Origin Stories - My dissertation offers a critical examination of how publishing companies treat Native American Origin stories. By de-emphasize the textual history of the textual versions of origin stories they publish, anthologies of American suggest that these stories have a timeless, immutable quality. This piece is currently under review by American Literary History.

• Cosmopolitanism - My research in Technical Communication revolves around Cosmopolitanism as a social and political movement.