He is also completing his Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Yale University. He is interested in how ethnic identity is revealed and concealed in the literature and art by and about the American working-class, and compares the representations of eastern European immigrants in American literature. His current focus is on the poetry from the American industrial heartland. His work examines how Rust Belt poets in the 20th and 21st centuries have negotiated a strong class-consciousness, their real or perceived ethnic identities, and the pressures of Americanization within the context of industrialization and deindustrialization, the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, and the emergence of new nation states in Eastern and Central Europe.