Areas of Interest
- Canadian literature
- American fiction
- The Bible
- Literature
Publications
Borderlines and Borderlands in English Canada: The Written Line (Orono, Maine: University of Maine/The Borderlands Project, 1981).
Co-ed., The Collected Poems of Patrick Lane. Madeira Park, BC: Harbour, 2011.
Co-ed., The Penguin Book of English-Canadian Short Fiction (Toronto: Pearson / Penguin: 2005).
Co-ed., An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English (Toronto: Oxford Univ. Press, 2010).
Ed., The Collected Poems of Al Purdy (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1985).
“The Northrop Frye Effect.” In Northrop Frye’s Canadian Literary Criticism and Its Influence. University of Toronto Press, 2009: 279-302.
“Open Secrets? Alice Munro and the Mystery Story.” Open Letter 11.9/12.1 (Fall/Winter 2003-04): 185-209.
"‘The Seriousness of Things beyond Your Understanding’" [on the visionary tradition in English-Canadian writing], University of Toronto Quarterly 70.4 (Fall 2001).
"The Practice and Theory of Canadian Thematic Criticism: A Reconsideration," University of Toronto Quarterly (Spring 2001).
Current Research
Canadian postmodernism, with special attention to the place of Marshall McLuhan and Robert Kroetsch; more generally: prairie fiction.