I am a Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, and Vice-Dean in the Faculty of Arts.
When I'm not working, which seems like a rare thing these days, I'm all about my children, grandchildren, partner, parents and everyone else in my complicatedly extended family. I love time with friends, food, and fine whisky, literature, film, music, and the visual arts of any kind at any time. I think 1970's Hollywood is the gritty, golden-age of film. My music tastes go to R&B, Funk, Blues, Rock, Alt Country, Folk.
My favourite quote: “The closer you get to Canada, the more things'll eat your horse.” (The Missouri Breaks 1976)
I teach and publish in the fields of critical and cultural theories with a particular emphasis on deconstruction and psychoanalysis, and my expertise in Twentieth-Century American Literature focuses on poetry and poetics as a form of material culture studies. My interests in material culture range from sound studies, archive theory, radical poetics, and technologies of writing to the energy humanities and intermedia studies.
I am a Governing Board Member and lead UAlberta Researcher for the SpokenWeb SSHRC Partnership Grant.
I'm very pleased to conduct graduate supervision in any areas related to the above interests. I consider graduate supervision a great privilege and one of the most rewarding aspects of my professional life.
A sample of some recently taught courses:
English 430: The Literary Freud
English 586: In the American Archive
English 694: Archive Pedagogy
English 356: American Technologies
English 208: Reading Histories: Making Books
English 357: Reading American Ideologies
English 679: Derrida Engaged