He received his PhD from the University of Minnesota and a BA from Amherst College in English and Theater & Dance. Prior to joining NTU, he taught in the Writing Program at NYU Abu Dhabi where he also served as Associate Director of the Writing Center. Riordan's research examines shifting understandings of global time and space in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and he currently is working on a cultural history of the around-the-world tour. His publications have appeared in Theatre Annual and Modernism/modernity.