His courses center on Romantic and Victorian British literature, science fiction, and gothic fiction, while his theoretical interests include gender criticism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, and the interplay between literature and science. Some of his favorite texts include William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Matthew Lewis's The Monk, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Joe Haldeman's The Forever War. He occasionally lectures on science fiction for a reading program sponsored by the North Carolina Humanities Council.