His research focuses on post–World War II American culture. He is the author of The Culture of Spontaneity: Improvisation and the Arts in Postwar America (Chicago, 1998), which describes the intellectual and social currents informing the trend toward spontaneous improvisation in American art, music, and literature in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s that resulted in such movements as Abstract Expressionism, bebop jazz, and Beat poetry. In 2002 he won the Oscar O. Winther Award from the Western Historical Association. His current research interests include dance studies, biofeedback, and affect theory.