Research/Areas of Interest
Modern European history, intellectual history, history of gender, modern European labor history and history of socialism, Central European history; German literary and drama history, history of cooperation and collaboration.
Poetry writing and reading practice, prosody, history of literature.
Education
- PhD, Modern European History, Boston University, Boston, United States, 2015
- MA, Creative Writing (Poetry), Boston University, Boston, United States, 2006
- BA, Writing, Literature, and History, Marlboro College, Vermont, United States, 2002
Biography
An historian of modern Europe as well as a poet, I teach courses in creative writing and history at Tufts. I came to Tufts after two years as a Visiting Assistant Professor of modern European and world history at the University of Hartford and a year as a faculty fellow in modern European history at Colby College. I have also taught both undergraduate creative writing students and graduate students in the MFA program at Boston University. In the English department, I regularly teach the introductory poetry workshop and, more occasionally, the advanced poetry workshop and special topics in poetry. In the history department, I teach classes on early modern and modern Europe, modern Germany and central Europe, modern European intellectual history, the Enlightenment, and the Holocaust. I also advise students pursuing honors theses in European and transnational history, and I am a pre-major advisor for first- and second-year students at Tufts.
As an interdisciplinary scholar and writer, I am keen to help my students wrestle with and gain confidence in historical methodology and poetic craft, while at the same time understanding the exciting intersections and interactions that happen when disciplines meet. Just as anything that happens in the past may become an object of historical study, so too can a poem take on any subject--and while we might use different skills and methods to analyze a poem or historical text, as primary sources, we approach them with the same care, curiosity, rigorousness, and sense of taking them on their own terms and within their own context. I enjoy advising pre-major as well as honors thesis students because I enjoy supporting and working with students at all stages of their intellectual and creative journey, as they grow, change their minds, and develop confidence and intellectual courage.
I hold a PhD in modern European history as well as a terminal MA in creative writing (MFA equivalent), both from Boston University. I am the author of a book of poems, My German Dictionary, which won the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize and was published in 2019 by the Waywiser Press, and the editor of a student edition of the classic work of modern German drama, Mother Courage and her Children, published by Bloomsbury/Methuen in 2022. My first historical monograph, Artistic Collaboration, Exile, and Brecht: A New Intellectual History, 1900-1950, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury in fall 2025.
As an interdisciplinary scholar and writer, I am keen to help my students wrestle with and gain confidence in historical methodology and poetic craft, while at the same time understanding the exciting intersections and interactions that happen when disciplines meet. Just as anything that happens in the past may become an object of historical study, so too can a poem take on any subject--and while we might use different skills and methods to analyze a poem or historical text, as primary sources, we approach them with the same care, curiosity, rigorousness, and sense of taking them on their own terms and within their own context. I enjoy advising pre-major as well as honors thesis students because I enjoy supporting and working with students at all stages of their intellectual and creative journey, as they grow, change their minds, and develop confidence and intellectual courage.
I hold a PhD in modern European history as well as a terminal MA in creative writing (MFA equivalent), both from Boston University. I am the author of a book of poems, My German Dictionary, which won the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize and was published in 2019 by the Waywiser Press, and the editor of a student edition of the classic work of modern German drama, Mother Courage and her Children, published by Bloomsbury/Methuen in 2022. My first historical monograph, Artistic Collaboration, Exile, and Brecht: A New Intellectual History, 1900-1950, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury in fall 2025.