Writing

Current Projects

Book Chapter: “Reflections on a Revolt: Mapping the Wellesley Mission from the Founding to the Present,” in The Radical Project of Feminist Education: 150 Years at Wellesley (Forthcoming from MIT Press, 2026).

Book: We the People: Reflections on the Promise and Imperilment of Higher Education in America

While the charters of the United States’ earliest colleges, many of which remain elite institutions today, posited a firm connection between democracy and education, civics, and contributions to a moral society, a core tenet of this book is that these ideals are in actuality borne out by higher educational institutions that arose because those wishing to pursue a college degree were excluded from the original higher ed institutions. The courageous missions of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, women’s colleges, tribal colleges, public and community colleges founded in the nineteenth- and twentieth- century testify to the critical importance of access and equity, issues that remain critical today.  Each chapter in We the People will focus on the true range of higher educational institutions in the United States—a pluralism often ignored given the attention devoted to exclusive institutions. The book will also explore the challenges many of these institutions face today, in the midst of college closures, decreasing enrollment and retention rates, and increasing questions regarding the value of a college degree. While the body of existent scholarship will be referenced, interviews with students, alumni, faculty, and staff will provide crucial testimony throughout the book’s campus case studies, as these voices from the ground are paramount. Historicizing the extraordinary work occurring beyond elite institutions is critical for public understanding, and therefore, public support.

Books

Children of the Raven and the Whale: Visions and Revisions in American Literature (University of Virginia Press, 2019)

Domesticity and Design in American Women’s Lives and Literature: Stowe, Alcott, Cather, and Wharton Writing Home (Routledge, 2011)

Articles & Book Chapters

“The Case for Care: A Review of The Caring University: Reimagining the Higher Education Workplace after the Great Resignation.” Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. 23 July 2025.

“A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand:” The Need for A United Front in the Attacks on Higher Education” Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. 30 May 2025.

“In Defense of the Classroom.” New York Daily News. 14 May 2020.

“Modernism Delayed, Not Denied: Wharton, Hemingway, and Scribner’s Magazine.” Wharton, Hemingway, and the Advent of Modernism. Ed. Lisa Tyler. Louisiana State University Press, 2018.

“Shut Not Your Doors to Me, Proud Libraries!”: The Repatriation of Edith Wharton’s Library.” From Page to Place: American Literary Tourism and the Afterlives of Authors. Ed. Hilary Iris Lowe and Jennifer Harris. University of Massachusetts Press, 2017.

“New York Unearthed: 9/11, Let the Great World Spin, and the Archaeology of Grief.” The City Since 9/11: Literature, Film, Culture. Ed. Keith Wilhite. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2015.

“Not Even New York Was Enough to Lighten Her Mood:” Teaching St. Herbert—A Tale in Brooklyn. COMMON-PLACE 15.2 (Winter 2015).

“A Moveable Self: Edith Wharton’s Library and Its Return to The Mount.” The Edith Wharton Review 30.2: (Fall 2014): 1-16.

“A Walker in the City: Lee’s Native Speaker, Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn, and Whitman’s Cartographic Legacy.” Studies in American Culture 36.1 (October 2013): 29-54.

“Taking Up Thoreau’s Pencil: A Luddite Explores Uses of Technology in the American Literature Classroom.” Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice. Summer 2011 (4:4): 77-82.

“Mens Sana in Corpore Sano: Implementing and Evaluating Writing Across the Curriculum Strategies in Physical Education.” The Physical Educator. Winter 2009(4): 170-179.

“Chintz Goes to War: Edith Wharton’s Revised Designs for Home and Homefront.” The Edith Wharton Review 23.2 (Spring 2007): 8-13.

“The Other American Kitchen: Alternative Domesticity in 1950s Politics, Design, and Fiction.” Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture. 3.2 (Fall 2004).