He specializes in 19th-century American literature and antebellum print culture, with an emphasis on working-class identity and cross-racial sympathy in the works of such authors as Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, George Lippard, and Frank Webb. He has held visiting research fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society and the Library Company of Philadelphia, and his essays can be found in American Studies (2006), American Periodicals (2009, 2014, 2015), and The Cambridge History of American Crime Fiction (2017).