Professor and Department Chair of International Literary and Cultural Studies
International Literary and Visual Studies
Japanese Program
Premodern and modern Japanese literature, figurality and the development of modern consciousness, gothic studies, realism, lyricism, animism, and eschatology.
Modern Arabic Literature, High school Arabic pedagogy and curriculum design, second language acquisition, high school political science and philosophy instruction
Theory of Second Language Acquisition, Language Pedagogy, foreign language textbook construction, language and culture, and computer assisted language learning
ACTFL OPI testing
Translating (English into Arabic & vise versa)
Consecutive Interpreting (English to Arabic & vise versa)
Communicative Method Approach in teaching Arabic
Online Education
Online Arabic Language and Culture curriculum designed & development
International Literary and Visual Studies
Japanese Program
History and theory of animation
Japanese animation (anime) and comics (manga)
Modern Japanese literature
Popular culture, especially science fiction and fantasy
Contemporary constructions of gender and the body
Technology and culture
Fan culture
Representations of trauma and loss
Chinese orthography and the Chinese reading process, utilizing approaches applied within a transactional socio-psycholinguistic framework that includes eye movement research and miscue analysis.
German Program
International Literary and Visual Studies
Seventeenth to twenty-first century German literature in its European context; Literature and the Environment, Discourses of Sustainability; Literary and Cultural Theory, Theories of Reading; Intersections of Literature, Science, and Philosophy; Media
Studies, Aesthetics of the Human Voice; Post-dramatic Theater; History of Germanistik in the United States 1933-1945