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I bring twenty years of professional experience in higher education and a wealth of knowledge about instructional strategies and academic writing.

As a native of Appalachia and the only person in my immediate family to pursue higher education, I succeeded because dedicated faculty reached out to me. I now strive to help the next generation of students take full advantage of their opportunity by seeking out learning innovation. Now working with college-bound teenagers, I combine my passion for learning innovation, my love of language and visual media, and my gift for honing people’s critical thinking power and bringing out their creative potentials.

My scholarship reflects my long-held interests in literature, religion, and cultural history. God Fearing & Free: A Spiritual History of America’s Cold War (Harvard University Press, 2010) was favorably reviewed in The New Republic and received the Ray and Pat Browne Award from the Popular Culture Association. As the chief editor of This Life, This World: New Essays on Marilynne Robinson (Brill, 2015), I interviewed Pulitzer Prize-winning and Congressional Medal-winning author. In 2021, I will be publishing a third book, Protestantism on Screen: Religion, Politics, and Aesthetics in European and American Movies (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).