He received his Ph.D. in comparative literature from McGill University. He has written on the impact of communications technology on the construction and practice of identity, electronic communities, and the influence of digital media on narrative conventions. His publications include Saved From oblivion: The place of media, from diaries to Web cams (Peter Lang, 2004), Hypertext: The straight story (Peter Lang, 2006), and as co-editor and contributor, Memory and migration: Multidisciplinary approaches to memory studies (University of Toronto Press, 2011).