I am a specialist in American literature and culture and have written two monographs and thirty articles on that research. I have been at IU my entire career, having come straight from grad school in 1990. I was chair of English from 2009-2012, and have served as Director of the College Arts and Humanities Institute since 2012. I was Artistic Director of the Chicago Humanities Festival from February 2015 to August 2017. CHF is the largest and longest-running festival of arts and ideas in the US, programming around 140 events a year. At IU, was one of two founders of the Center for Theoretical Inquiry in the Humanities. I have spent much of my career advancing the cause of research in the arts and humanities and especially interdisciplinary collaboration and dialogue.
In addition to this scholarly and administrative work, I have played trombone for nearly 50 years, have performed at Ronnie Scott’s, and Wolf Trap (before it burned down, in a big band backing up Dizzy Gillespie), and C3 (among other Bloomington venues). I am recorded on the first Bang on a Can CD, playing music by Evan Ziporyn.