RESEARCH & INTERESTS: My research in the cultural studies of science deals primarily with the dissemination of knowledge in the nineteenth century and its impact on the novel. The book discusses the influence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK), of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and of other compendia of knowledge on "pre-Darwinian" authors including Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley, Charles Kingsley, and George Eliot. The book, Useful Knowledge: The Victorians, Morality, and 'The March of Intellect', which focuses on encyclopedias and similar "knowledge texts," is available from Duke University Press. Useful Knowledge was selected by Choice as an "Outstanding Academic Book of the Year."

I have also edited The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century (1827), a work of speculative fiction written by the horticultural popularizer, Jane Webb Loudon (University of Michigan Press, 1994). Prior to that I co-edited, with George Levine, One Culture: Essays in Science and Literature (University of Wisconsin, 1987).

While at Georgia Tech I helped develop the undergraduate degree program in Science, Technology, and Culture (STAC). Along with Hugh Crawford, of Georgia Tech, and founded Configurations: A Journal of Literature , Science, and Technology which is published by Johns Hopkins University Press. In my latter years at Georgia Tech I spent two years as Associate Chair and one year as Interim Chair (FY 99-00)

I am currently looking at the impact of private subscription libraries in England. While at the Huntington Library, I held the Trent Dames Fellow in the History of Civil Engineering. My research there, on turnpikes, bridges, roads, and travel, feeds directly into my work on the dissemination of knowledge in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In the last few years, I have also been a Fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities at Cambridge University, and at the Harry Ransom Research Center.