Research directions
Littérature nord-américaine
North American Literature and Culture
Culture Studies
This axis of research links my work on American visual culture (such as photography [e.g. Diane Arbus], painting [Grant Wood], and film [e.g. the post-WWII Hollywood war film]) with an analysis based on discourse analysis developed by the Frankfurt School critics and the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Critical Studies
Gender and Queer Theory
Gender is an analytical framework that is applied throughout my research.
American Gothic
My book on The Politics of the American Gothic examines several major nineteenth-century authors in terms of their oblique engagements with key issues of cultural conflict, including race, slavery, homosexuality and feminism. A key argument of the book is that gothic fiction does not frighten readers but produces instead an acutely ethical reading experience based on explorations of problems of epistemological and moral judgment. A recent development in this field for me has been an investigation of War Gothic, namely, the use of body horror and the uncanny to represent the physical and mental injuries sustained through combat.
Melodrama
An interdisciplinary exploration of the links between melodrama in American literature, popular culture and cinema. Specifically, I have been looking at war cinema as a frequent site of melodrama as it stages moving scenes of self-sacrifice and patriotic pathos.
Adventure and Imperialism
A new research subject has been the persistance of the adventure genre, universally associated with British literature of the 19th century, in American literature and especially in connection to warfare.
Representation and Discourses of War in 20th Century American Culture
This research project draws on sociology, gender studies and cultural studies in order to examine the rhetoric and representation of war in American literature and cinema, with a special focus on post-WWII texts. A monograph based on this project will be published by the end of 2020, with the title: Combat Death in Contemporary American Culture (Lexington Books).
In 2019, I received the Russel B. Nye Annual Award for the Outstanding Essay in the Journal of Popular Culture for the essay "American War Adventure and the Generic Pleasures of Military Violence: Clint Eastwood's American Sniper," which is based on one of the chapters of the forthcoming book.
American Literature and Culture
War and Military Death in post World War II Culture
The American Gothic
Neoliberal Gothic
Melodrama
Eco-Criticism and the Anthropocene
Counterculture Studies
