• Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British fiction
• Historical fiction and literary form
• History of the novel
• Theory of narrative

Articles:

• "Why Won't Our Terms Stay Put? The Narrative Communications Diagram Scrutinized and Historicized" in A Companion to Narrative Theory, ed. James Phelan and Peter Rabinowitz (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 299-311.
• "Is There a Problem with Historical Fiction (or with Scott's Redgauntlet)?", Rethinking HIstory, 9 (2005), 173-95 (invited article).
  
• "Realities of Prison: Dickens, Scott, and the Secularization of their Eighteenth-Century Inheritance," in In the Grip of the Law: Prisons, Trials and the Space in Between, ed. Monika Fludernik and Greta Olsen (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2004), 169-84.
  
• "Finding Places for Writing in a Research University: A Director's View," for Local Knowledges, Local Practices: Cultures of Writing at Cornell, ed. Jonathan Monroe, Pittsburgh Series in Composition, Literacy, and Culture (Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2003)
• "Scott, Women and History," European Romantic Review, 13, (2002) 285-97
• "Loose Narrators: Display, Engagement, and the Search for a Place in History," Narrative, 3 (1995), 95-116.
• "The Historical Novel," in Literature and Criticism: A New Century Guide, ed. M. Coyle et al. London: Routledge, 1990, 531-43
  
• "With Reference to Austin." Diacritics, 20 (Summer 1990), 75-92.
• "Scott's 'Daemon' and the Voices of Historical Narration," JEGP 88 (1989) 21-33.
  

Books:

• Reading the Nineteenth Century Realist Novel (with Alison Case). Under contract with Blackwell.
• Narrating Reality: Austen, Scott, Eliot (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999). Paperback edition, 2004
• Critical Essays on Sir Walter Scott: The Waverley Novels, ed. Harry E. Shaw, Critical Essays on British Literature (New York: G. K. Hall, 1996).
• The Forms of Historical Fiction: Sir Walter Scott and His Successors (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1983). Second printing, 1985. Part of chapter one of this book was reprinted in Nineteenth Century Literature Criticism, Vol. 18, ed. Marie Lazzari (Detroit: Gale, 1995), 224-27.
  

University Service:

• Senior Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, 2003-
• Chair, Department of English, July 1999-2002
• Arts College Curriculum Committee, 1999-2000
  
• Dean's Advisory Committee on Appointments, 1998-2001
• University Appeals Panel, 1994-99
• Humanities Council, 1991-94 (Chair, 1993-94)
• Arts College ad-hoc Committee on Sexual Harassment, 1988-91
• University Lectures Committee, 1988-92 (Chair, 1990-92)
• Director, John S. Knight Writing Program, 1986-92
• Hull Fund Committee, 1984-88; Chair, 1987-88

• Consultant for Blackwell, Broadview Press, Cornell University Press, W.W. Norton, Ohio State University Press, PMLA, Studies in the Novel, Style, Victorian Studies, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture
• Chair, George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism Selection Committee, 1999-present