A native of Texas, he earned his Ph.D. in English at Claremont Graduate University in California and has taught in Texas, California, Iowa, Hong Kong, and Mongolia. He is a specialist in 19th-century American literature, and focuses much of his research on the impact of scientific innovation on literature. His recent publications include “Tom and Becky in the Cave: An Anti-Captivity Narrative?” in the 2009 Mark Twain Annual, and “River Gloom and River Glory: Thoreau’s Inversion of the Romantic Sublime in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers” in the Bhatter College Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies.