I am a Professor in the Department of English and Director of the School for Advanced Studies in the Arts and Humanities at Western University where I have been a faculty member since 1995. I have also held tenure-stream positions at Carleton University and the University of Waterloo.

As a Canadian literature scholar, I have authored and edited books and articles on Canadian literature ranging from the early 19th century to contemporary writing, including poetry, fiction, drama, collaboration, and autobiography. I also teach and publish in popular culture studies, especially the aesthetic and social dimensions of crime fiction and film. My research in popular cultural studies began with a collaborative book with Priscilla Walton of Carleton University on the explosion of popular women’s detective novels during the 1980’s and 1990s, in which authors adapted the traditionally masculine hard-boiled genre. Detective Agency: Women Rewriting the Hard-boiled Tradition understands the genre in its aesthetic, social, and economic contexts, reading it as an index of cultural beliefs. I have also published on lesbian detective fiction, detective film, and Canadian detective fiction. I have published That Art of Difference: Documentary Collage and English-Canadian Writing, and edited, with Marta Dvorak of the Sorbonne, a collection of essays, Carol Shields and the Extra-Ordinary. My work organizing a conference and co-editing the associated journal issue of Studies in Canadian Literature in honour of Frank Davey reflects both my debt to that scholar (who was my dissertation supervisor and latterly my colleague at UWO) and my interest in poetics and public culture.