About

I’m an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Missouri, where I’m Associate Chair and teach courses in twentieth- and twenty-first-century American literature and culture and direct the university’s Minor in Missouri Studies. I wrote After the End of History: American Fiction in the 1990s and co-edited The Legacy of David Foster Wallace and The Clash Takes on the World: Transnational Perspectives on the Only Band That Matters. I’m Series Editor of The New American Canon: The Iowa Series in Contemporary Literature and Culture. I’m also author of the textbook 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology. I am currently working on a book on the history of the American university press and have an edited collection, Banning Books in America: Not a How-To, appearing in February 2026.

Nothing I write here is anything but my opinion. I would not presume to speak for my employer or anybody else’s.