Her dissertation on "Modern Chicana Literature: An Intercultural Analysis" won the prestigious Daimler Chrysler Foundation's "Academy Award for Intercultural Studies." Her books include Chicana Ways (2002), Gender Debat/tl/ed (2003), Stories from Down Under, co-edited with David Carter (2004), Violence and Transgression in World Minority Literatures (co-editor, 2005) and Global Realignments and the Canadian Nation in the Third Millennium (2009). Forthcoming is 'A Nation Forged in Fire': Canadian Literature and the Construction of National Identity.