Since 2006, I have been teaching at DSU where I regularly teach composition and a range of literature classes, including Multicultural Literature of the U.S., Critical Introduction to Literature, World Literature, Major World Authors, Literature and the Land, Western American Literature, Literature and Culture, and Immigrant Literature.
I am originally from Germany. After completing my first Staatsexamen in English and French literature at the University Göttingen, I was awarded a one-year Fulbright scholarship at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania. Five years later, I received my Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina, Columbia. My focus is in twentieth- and twenty-first century American literature, with a specialization in ecocriticism, western literature, and geocriticism; I am particularly interested in the intersections of ethnicity, gender, culture, and environment in contemporary American literature.
My publications include Myth and Environment in Recent Southwestern Literature: Healing Narratives (Lexington Books, 2014), the edited volume The Way We Read James Dickey: Critical Approaches for the Twenty-first Century (University of South Carolina Press, 2009), and the special issue Theorizing Space and Gender in the 21st Century of The Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, for which I served as the guest editor. My essays and reviews have appeared in Lab Lit: Exploring Literary and Cultural Representations of Science (eds. Olga Pilkington and Ace Pilkington), Feminist Ecocriticism: Environment, Women, and Literature (ed. Douglas A. Vakoch), Color, Hair and Bone: Race in the Twenty-first Century (eds. Linden Lewis, Glyne Griffith, and Elizabeth Crespo Kebler), The Journal of Contemporary Thought, The Rocky Mountain Review, and The South Atlantic Review.
In addition to teaching in the classroom, I have accompanied field-trip and study-abroad courses to Catalina Island, Zion National Park, and Costa Rica, and I have received a learning innovation mini-grant from the Center for Teaching and Learning for the Literature and the Land course. My students regularly engage in service activities in the community.
Because I strongly believe in the value of undergraduate research and having served as chair of the undergraduate research committee, I encourage my students to engage in research projects. If you’re interested in undergraduate research and need a mentor, I would love to work with you.