I received my Ph.D. in 1995 from the University of Washington with a dissertation on the twentieth-century Norwegian novelist, Cora Sandel, which was written while on a Fulbright fellowship to Oslo, Norway. I spent a post-doctoral year in Turku, Finland, seven years at Arizona State University, and a sabbatical year in Oslo, Norway before joining the faculty of the University of Oregon in 2004.

My primary research interests are prose modernism (especially from the 1930s) and contemporary cinema (especially the Danish "Dogma 95" movement and the Norwegian "Norwave" of the last decade). I have published one book, On the Margins: Nordic Women Modernists of the 1930s (Norvik Press, 2005), and have recently completed a second, entitled Figurative Space in the Novels of Cora Sandel, which will be published by the Norwegian publishing house Alvheim & Eide. The title of this book reflects my growing interest in theories of space and place in literature. My third book project will take me back further in time, to the nineteenth century, where I am exploring links between the construction of national identity and literary representations of the landscape and architecture.

I am an active member of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study, the Ibsen Society of America, and the Norwegian Researchers and Teachers Association of North America. I regularly teach courses in Norwegian language, as well as modern Scandinavian literature, cinema, history, and culture.