My primary research and teaching areas are in Renaissance Drama, especially William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, in critical theory and philosophy, and in early modern intellectual history, especially literary theory and early scientific thought, the history of political economy, law, colonization, and the State, cartography, and theories of space in early modern mathematics, poetry, and theater.

I am currently writing a book with Jane Hwang Degenhardt (U-Mass, Amherst) on early modern notions of the "world," especially as viewed through Shakespeare's plays, tentatively entitled "The Shakespearean Horizon," as well as related projects on theorizing fiction in the early modern period and on Shakespeare, "art," experience, and cosmology. I recently edited Ben Jonson's Poetaster for the Routledge Anthology of Early Modern Drama, ed. Jeremy Lopez.

Along with Mary Thomas Crane, I edit a book series entitled Alembics: Penn Studies in Literature and Science (Penn Press). The series publishes books on all aspects of literature and science from the medieval to the contemporary periods. Visit the link to find out more about the series or about how to submit a proposal.

At Rutgers I am the Vice President for Academic Initiatives and former Director of the Center for Cultural Analysis. At the CCA I coordinate EMRG @ RU: The Early Modern Research Group at Rutgers, which sponsors talks, colloquia, and other forms of intellectual exchange on all aspects of the period 1500-1700. I am also a member of the Race and the Early Modern World Working Group at the CCA and of the Medieval and Early Modern Studies Colloquium, an English Department faculty-graduate student research group.