The winner of the Milton Plesur and the SUNY Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence in Teaching, he teaches courses in British and American fiction, cultural studies, and popular culture. Born and raised in England, he received his B.A. from Oxford University, his M.A. from the University of Sussex, and his Ph.D. from the Modern Thought and Literature Program at Stanford University. He has published on a variety of subjects, including celebrity, film adaptation, Dracula, and crime fiction and he is the author of Natural Born Celebrities: Serial Killers in American Culture, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2005. He is currently working on two book-length projects: From the Locked Room to the Globe: Space in Crime Fiction, and Murder Culture: Why Americans are Obsessed by Homicide.