Leaving the Hundred Acre Wood

My research interests include children's and adolescent literature, ethics, politics, narrative theory, popular culture, and everyday life.

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In 2022, I gave the Lois Lenski Children's Literature Lecture at Illinois State University on the “The First Hundred Years of Winnie-the-Pooh" and I was interviewed about the topic for The 21st on WILL radio. Click here for the radio interview

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I was awarded the Judith Plotz Emerging Scholar Award by the Children's Literature Association and the Children's Literature in Education Emerging Scholar Award; the winning article "Innocence is No Defense: Politicized Childhood in Antonio Skármeta La composición/The Composition" appeared in the December 2014 issue of Children's Literature in Education.    

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In 2016, I defended my dissertation, "The Stuff of Everyday Life: A Bakhtinian Reading of the Prosaic Worlds of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, and David Lodge’s Souls and Bodies."

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After completing my studies at Illinois State University, I taught at University of Southern Indiana and at Auburn University at Montgomery. In 2021, I started at Eastern Illinois University.