• Neoformalism
• Eighteenth-century literature, criticism, and philosophy
• Theory of satire
• Modern critical theory
• English and American poetry
• Formalist criticism and theory

Books:

• Acts of Knowledge: Pope's Later Poems. Lewisburg, Pa.: Associated University Presses, 1981.
   
• Literature and Insubstantiality in Later Eighteenth-Century England. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1984.
   
• Teaching Prose: A Guide for Writing Instructors. Ed. Fredric V. Bogel and Katherine K. Gottschalk. N.Y.: W. W. Norton, 1988.
   
• ''The Dream of My Brother": An Essay on Johnson's Authority. Victoria, B.C.: Studies in English Literature, Univ. of Victoria Monographs,1990.
   
• The Difference Satire Makes: Rhetoric and Reading from Jonson to Byron. Ithaca and London: Cornell Univ. Press, 2001.

Articles:

• "Structure and Substantiality in Later Eighteenth-Century Literature," Studies in Burke and His Time, 15 (1974),143-154.
  
• "Deconstructive Criticism: The Logic of Derrida's Différance," Centrum, 6 (1978), 50-60.
  
• "Synonymy and Literary Meaning," College English, 40 (1978), 133-138.
  
• "Fables of Knowing: Melodrama and Related Forms," Genre, 11 (1978), 83-108.
  
• "The Rhetoric of Substantiality: Johnson and the Later Eighteenth Century," Eighteenth-Century Studies, 12 (1979), 457-480.
  
• "Irony, Inference, and Critical Uncertainty," The Yale Review, 69 (1980), 503-519.
  
• "Crisis and Character in Autobiography: The Later Eighteenth Century," SEL, 21 (1981), 499-512.
  
• "Dulness Unbound: Rhetoric and Pope's Dunciad," PMLA, 97 (1982), 844-55.
  
• "Did you once see Johnson plain?": Reflections on Boswell's Life and the State of Eighteenth-Century Studies," in Boswell's Life of Johnson: New Questions, New Answers, ed. John A Vance. Athens, Ga.: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1985, 73-93.
  
  "Johnson and the Role of Authority," in The New Eighteenth Century: Theory, Politics, English Literature, ed. Felicity Nussbaum and Laura Brown. N.Y. and London: Methuen, 1987, 188-209.
  
• "Understanding Prose," in Teaching Prose: A Guide for Writing , ed. Fredric V. Bogel and Katherine K. Gottschalk. N.Y.: W. W. Norton, 1988, 155-215.
  
• "Composition Theory and the Curriculum" (with K. Hjortshoj) in Teaching Prose: A Guide for Writing Instructors, ed. Fredric V. Bogel and Katherine K. Gottschalk. N.Y.: W. W. Norton, 1988, 1-19.
  
• "Teaching Pope Today: Satire, Resistance, Theory," in Approaches To Teaching Alexander Pope's Poetry, ed. Wallace Jackson and R. Paul Yoder. N.Y.: Modern Language Association of America, 1993, 64-72.
  
• "The Difference Satire Makes: Reading Swift's Poems," in Theorizing Satire, ed. Brian A. Connery and Kirk Combe. N.Y.: St. Martin's Press, 1995, 43-53.

Selected Reviews:

• Review of The Age of Wit, by D. Judson Milburn, Seventeenth-Century Newsletter, 17 (1966),14-15.
  
• Review of Imagining a Self: Autobiography and Novel in Eighteenth-Century England, by Patricia M. Spacks, Modern Language Quarterly, 38 (1977), 200-203.
  
• Review of Alexander Pope and the Traditions of Formal Verse Satire, by Howard Weinbrot, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, 25 (1984), 78-81.
  
• Review of Pride and Negligence: the History of the Boswell Papers, by Frederick A. Pottle, Studies in Scottish Literature, 20 (1985), 294-298.
  
• Review of The Augustan Idea in English Literature, by Howard Erskine-Hill, The Scriblerian, 18 (1985), 64-66.
  
• Review of Alexander Pope: A Life, by Maynard Mack, The Scriblerian, 19 (1986), 23-26.
  
• Review of In Mind of Johnson: A Study of Johnson the Rambler, by Philip Davis, The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography, 1991, 432-436.
  
• Review of New Light on Boswell: Critical and Historical Essays on the Occasion of the Bicentenary of "The Life of Johnson," ed. Greg Clingham, Modern Philology, 91 (1994), 517-523.
  
• Review of Cutting Edges: Postmodern Critical Essays on Eighteenth-Century Satire, ed. James E. Gill, Modern Philology, Fall 1998.

• Chair, Graduate Policy and Curriculum Committee, Department of English, 2002
• Chair, Bylaws Committee, College of Arts and Sciences, Cornell University, 1997-1998
• Graduate Admissions, Department of English, 1994, 2001
• Acting Chair, Department of English, Cornell University, 1991
• Director, Freshman Writing Program, Cornell University, 1982-1986