I work in literary and cultural studies, with geographical emphasis on comparative studies of the Americas (especially the United States, the Caribbean, and Brazil). Much of my teaching and research focuses on human rights and LGBT/Queer Studies .
Current Teaching
Winter 2008 "Human Rights, Literature, Theory"
http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/hrlt/
Fall 2007, repeat Spring 2008
"Literature of the Americas: Brazil and the United States"
Current Research
For information about my book Colonial Affairs: Bowles, Burroughs, and Chester Write Tangier, please visit http://www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/books/2107.htm
I am currently writing a book, with the working title "Human Rights, Humane Letters," in which I argue for a broad reconsideration of the continuities and discontinuities between rights discourse and the humanities. In recasting “humane letters” as a contemporary critical enterprise I reappraise the humanistic claim that literature and literary study are ethical as well as political projects. I pursue this argument through a sequence of chapters grouped under two rubrics: the discursive politics of human rights, and the cultural politics of human rights. I argue that successful human rights practice depends upon strategic interventions in cultural politics, and that literature and criticism offer crucial assistance in this effort. Throughout the chapters I persistently inquire how the practice of human rights work in the world today can reshape how we lay claim to notions of “human,” the “humane,” and “humanity,” whether as political activists or as readers and literary critics.
