B.A., Pre- and Early Modern English and American Literature, University of California at Santa Cruz; M.A., English, Literature, Colorado State University. Magna cum Laude, National Scholars Honor Society, Phi Kappa Phi International Honor Society.

I teach College Composition, Writing Arguments, Introduction to World Humanities, Writing in the Social Sciences, and Writing in Digital Environments. My academic work focuses on early and antebellum American literature as viewed through historical context and culturally constructed emotion theory. My book of scholarship, Built on Emotion: Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Emotional Work of Uncle Tom's Cabin, is available through Amazon. I wrote a novel called Top of the World, a collection of poetry called Weltschmerz, a play called Macabre, two musical albums called Trespassing and Loitering, and Book of Verse, and I'm currently converting my novel to a screenplay.

I'm interested in the ways narrative can be shaped subtly and often subliminally. The narratives we accept effect our emotional expectations and the ways we interpret information and events through constructs of identity. I'm also interested in the ways clever rhetoricians can convince us to accept arguments without interrogation. Too often, they convince us to reject alternative arguments without actually listening to their reasoning or evidence, or by demonizing writers and topics through labels and ad hominem attacks. With new technologies of literacy at our fingertips and an ability to publish instantly to the five billion web users worldwide, we stand on the precipice of a new dissemination of intellectual power. Simultaneously, we face a continual and concerted effort to restrict that new freedom back into the limitations of conventional media.