Areas of Research/Interest: Renaissance poetry and prose; Shakespeare; Milton; literature and science in the Renaissance; the history of rhetoric; the history of criticism; the sociology of literary study; twentieth-century literary theory

Select Publications:
Culture Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1993.
Poetic Authority: Spenser, Milton and Literary History. New York: Columbia University Press. 1983.

Affiliations: Editorial Board, English Literary History, 1989-96; Modern Language Association; Modern Language Association, Prize Committee for First Book Publication, 1991-95; Executive Committee, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC; Supervisory Board of the English Language Institute, 1996-97; Editorial Board, Profession; Modern Language Association, Committee on the Bibliography of the Teaching of Literature.

Fellowships/Honors: Class of 1932 Fellow of the Council of the Humanities, Princeton University, 1996-97; Rene Wellek Award of the American Comparative Literature Association, 1994, for Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation.