Areas of Specialty:

• Post-WWII American literature and culture
• American Film and Television
• Cold War Studies
• American Studies, with an emphasis on the representation of race

• Television in Black-and-White America: Race and National Identity. UP Kansas, 2005.
• Flatlining on the Field of Dreams: Cultural Narratives in the Films of President Reagan's America. Rutgers UP, 1997.
• Containment Culture: American Narrative, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age.  Duke UP, 1995.
• Invisible Criticism: Ralph Ellison and the American Canon. U Iowa P, 1988; paperback, 1991.
• (Editor.) May All Your Fences Have Gates: Essays on the Drama of August Wilson. U Iowa P, 1994.
• "God's Law and the Wide Screen: The Ten Commandments as Cold War 'Epic'." PMLA, May 1993, 415-430 (winner of the Modern Language Association 1993 William Riley Parker Prize).
• "Reading the Body: Alice Walker's Meridian and the Archeology of Self." Modern Fiction Studies, Spring 1988, 55-67 (winner of 1988 "Margaret Church MFS Memorial Prize").
• Poetry in: Georgia Review, New England Review, Paris Review, Partisan Review, Shenandoah, Sycamore Review.