He is the author of Capturing the Beat Moment: Cultural Politics and the Poetics of Presence (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010) and of numerous articles on the Beat Generation which have appeared in such publications as Chicago Review, College Literature and Dionysos: The Journal of Literature and Addiction. Erik is currently working on a book-length examination of the figure of the shadow as it appears in Cold War literary and popular texts and on journal-length article on the Turkish reception of On the Road.