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A Shakespeare and Milton scholar by training, my research program focuses on the interplay of the sacred and the profane in early modern literature. That work increasingly draws on the history of ideas as well — reading Renaissance drama through the frameworks of natural law, Scholastic and Reformation theology, and metaphysical realism, and asking how those pre-modern intellectual traditions still illuminate questions we face today. I especially love talking with students about books and ideas. My teaching interests run from the late medieval period through Shakespeare and Milton to the nineteenth-century novel, particularly those of Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope. I like to read widely in literature, philosophy, theology, and history; for fun I am especially keen on the Jeeves and Wooster novels of P. G. Wodehouse. In addition to being professor of English, I hold the Frank W. Mayborn Chair of Arts and Sciences at ͬ³Ç¿ìÔ¼.

A native Iowan, I have lived in Missouri, Ohio, Barbados, and now Texas, which I love both for its semi-arid climate and the warmth of its people. My wife, Jennifer, and I are the parents of two college-age children. We like to be outdoors, walk, swim, garden, listen to live music, particularly jazz and blues; and watch live theater, old movies, and soccer. I also have an abiding love of trees and of the natural world in all its created splendor.