I have two main research interests: sports literature and flash fiction. I am interested in how fiction writers and poets use sports to explore issues of identity, gender, race, class, psychology, competition, and civic pride. More recently, I've become interested in flash fictions extremely short narratives typically less than 1,000 words.
My scholarly projects have tended to explore three occasionally overlapping areas: 1) southern fiction and postmodernism, which extends work done for my dissertation, but with a sharper focus on humor (and a less dogmatic application of postmodern theory); 2) the intersection of rock music and literature/literary theory; and perhaps most significantly, 3) the art (and aesthetic philosophies) of Flannery O'Connor, which I have striven to approach from what might be called 'undoctrinaire' perspectives.
I have published several articles on O'Connor, as well as other authors, including Don DeLillo, James Dickey, William Faulkner, Barry Hannah, and Walker Percy. I've also published on Bruce Springsteen, and I am co-editing a collection of essays on explorations of evil in rock music.
My research focuses primarily on all things poetry and poetics. My book, Adelante, is a collection of poetry that examines the relationships between place and loss, juxtaposing the death of my Cuban father with the suffering and resilience of the natural world. I am also interested in global poetic forms and ekphrastic modes. Other creative pursuits include creative nonfiction and place-based writing. My critical interests include immigrant, Latinx, and Caribbean literatures, and I have presented scholarship on writers such as Eduardo C. Corral and Derek Walcott. Whether crafting original poetry or critically engaging literature by others, I am interested in how images conceal and reveal ideas.
My research interests include fiction writing and narrative theory. In addition, I hear the cases of juvenile offenders in Chester, and I taught one class a day at Chester High School for the school year. I am concerned about the school-to-prison pipeline, juvenile sentencing practices, and mass incarceration.
My research interests are literature of the Middle Ages, particularly Arthurian Literature, 19th-century writers, and the correlation between literature and popular fiction and film.