Research output per year
Research output per year
Professor of English; Head of the School of Education and English
Research activity per year
As Professor of English and Head of the School of Education and English at the University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China, and formerly Executive Director of the School of English Studies at Wenzhou-Kean University, Wenzhou, China, as well as having served as a director of writing at two liberal arts, career-oriented academic institutions, I have extensive experience in global education and administration in Sino-foreign higher education contexts, program and curriculum development, program administration, faculty recruitment and mentoring, and student employment supervision. My managerial style can be best characterized as collaborative, and I seek to empower faculty and students in their various roles at the institution.
In my teaching, I utilize student-centered, dialkogic practices in which students engage content through small-group activities and critical research projects. I encourage students to present their scholarship at student conferences, and I work with student assistants on faculty-student research projects. I have extensive experience teaching English literature and writing to L2 learners in English modes of instruction contexts in China. I teach such courses as studying literature, literary research and writing, Romanticism, Gothic literature, science fiction, and fantasy literature.
For most of my career I have published and given papers on Romanticism, Gothic literature, science fiction, and fantasy literature. I have published a college textbook on critical thinking in college composition that is in its second edition. My most recent book is on mythopoeic fantasy literature. My scholarship examines disciplinary intersections between literature, science, metaphysics, and religion.
More recently, I have developed research interests in cognitive literary studies and neurophenomenology of reading. In particular, I am interested in combining neuroscience and cognitive theories of "mind reading" or "theory of mind" to study classical theories of the phenomenology of reading (Wolfgang Iser and Hans Jauss) in order to come to a fuller understanding of how humans from various perspectives, experiences, and background read and interpret the same text.
Research output: Book/Report › Book › peer-review
Research output: Journal Publication › Article › peer-review
Research output: Journal Publication › Article › peer-review
Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceeding › Book Chapter › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › peer-review