I’m originally from Hamilton, and I did my BA and MA at McMaster, majoring in English with a minor concentration in Religious Studies for both degrees. As an undergraduate I fell in love with medieval literature, especially Old English, and had already long been more than half in love with Romantic poetry, so I decided to do one graduate degree on each. My MA thesis was on medieval dream visions, and I pursued my PhD in British Romantic literature at King's College, Cambridge, where I was an acolyte in the beautiful Gothic chapel. I wrote my dissertation on William Blake’s central image, “the human form divine”.

I came to St Jerome’s University in 2004, after being Assistant Professor at Butler University in Indiana, and before that, Instructor at Auburn University in Alabama. At those universities, I taught both composition and literature courses, and enjoyed the opportunity to include a broad range of texts, from the Vedas to The Getaway. At St. Jerome’s University the courses I teach include Sex and Marriage in Literature, and Editing Literary Works, as well as Literature of the Romantic Period, and the Jane Austen course. I supervise graduate students working on Romantic-era texts and/or the relations between gender, sexuality, medicine, and writing. I also get to indulge in Canadian literature here, as I’m a poetry editor for The New Quarterly, and I co-organize the Reading Series at St. Jerome’s University.

Grants
University of Manchester Research Networking Fund Grant for international collaboration in Tokyo on Eighteenth-Century Literature and Medicine (2013)
CIHR Operating Grant, “City Life and Well-Being: The Grey Zone of Health and Illness”. Primary investigator: Alan Blum (2006-2011)
Government of Canada Department of Foreign Affairs Cultural Personalities Exchange Program grant for lecture tour of Japan (2006)
St. Jerome’s University Faculty Research Grant (2005, 2012)
IODE War Memorial Postgraduate Scholarship (1998-1999)
SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship (1995-1997, declined; 1998-1999)
Commonwealth Scholarship (1995-1998)

Fellowships
Corresponding Fellow, The English Association (2016-present)
Visiting Fellow, Institute of American and Canadian Studies, Sophia University, Tokyo (2009-present)
Visiting Scholar, Department of Contemporary Literary Studies, University of Tokyo (2007, 2008)

Awards

Distinguished Teacher Award, University of Waterloo (2010)

British Romantic literature and culture (especially poetry)

William Blake

Erasmus Darwin

Gender and sexuality

Medical writing and illustration

Literature and science

Religion and literature