Biography: I completed my BA at Nipissing University in English, my MA at the University of Toronto in English, and my PhD at the University of Waterloo in English Language and Literature. I have taught at the University of Waterloo, St. Jerome’s University, and Trent University. In collaboration with my students, I create dynamic, interactive, and accessible learning environments for diverse student populations. My primary area of interest lies within the field of genre studies, particularly in terms of how narrative genres can function to accommodate, affect, oppress, and even liberate different reading audiences and negotiate multiple traditions of communication in varied social contexts. I am interested in how narrative genres stratify and categorize race, class, and gender in order to sustain long-standing systems of power and oppression. My current research covers two key areas: 1. My book length project, Manifest Destiny 2.0: Genre Trouble in Video Games argues that genre analysis can shed light on what happens when culturally valued and embedded narrative genres are remediated as video games. Building on a growing body of work that explores the cultural work of games (particularly in terms of critical race, gender, and class), I analyze the conventions and tropes of the western and noir genres through close, cultural readings of two popular games – Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption and L.A. Noire. When these primarily print and film genres are remediated as video games, they not only continue their original purpose to circulate exceptionalist, imperialist versions of the U.S., but also create a new form of embodied, performative literacy that, I argue, intensifies the power of literary genres (of any kind) and their rhetorical purpose. This project is under contract with the University of Nebraska Press. 2. I also head a collaborative project, located at digitalcommunitas.org, that explores how digital technology and media are changing the postsecondary classroom. Since its inception in the summer of 2012, the project has attracted a great deal of press and positive attention for the critical analyses of, for example, digital tools as a form of surveillance in the classroom; ableist assumptions of social networking sites; the pedagogical applications of Google docs; the remediation of traditional forms of teaching and learning; and the ideological purposes of learning platforms. When I am not teaching, playing (or writing about) video games, in a meeting, or updating my digital projects, I can be found trail-running with my dog or playing squash (quite badly) with my partner. If it’s spring or summer, look for me in my vegetable garden, wearing a ludicrous hat.