I am Professor of American Literature at the University of Manchester. I joined the University of Manchester in 2012 having previously taught at the University of York and Staffordshire University, and stints teaching young offenders, refugees, and asylum seekers.

My research interests include: James Baldwin, avant-garde little poetry magazines, the aesthetics of failure, the international underground, mid-twentieth century African American literature and culture, jazz, and the Beat Generation. 

I have mostly written about twentieth century US literature and culture, including publications on American cold war culture, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, JFK, Harold Norse, Jack Kerouac, Zora Neale Hurston, the Mimeograph Revolution, Tom Waits, William S. Burroughs, D.W. Griffith, film noir, Boris Vian, William Blake, Jeff Nuttall, and jazz and Pentecostalism.

Please see below for a list of my current and former PhD students' work and my areas of supervision. 

My work has appeared in journals including English Literary History, Genre, Textual Practice, African American Review, Literature and Theology, PN Review and Callaloo, in addition to a number of edited volumes including four Cambridge Companions. 

Non-academic Writing

My writing has been published in the Guardian (reviews, articles, obituaries),  Beat Scene, Byline Times, Literary Hub, Poetry Foundation, Big Issue, Literary Review, and International Times. I have written over eighty pieces for the Times Literary Supplement on 19th, 20th and 21st-century literature and culture, including nine freelance pieces on topics ranging from breaking into James Baldwin's house to living on a boat. 

I am the author/ editor of nine books:

American Cold War Culture, ed. (Edinburgh UP, 2005)

A Historical Guide to James Baldwin, ed. (Oxford UP, 2009)

James Baldwin (Liverpool UP, 2011) – Writers and Their Work series                                                                          

All Those Strangers: The Art and Lives of James Baldwin (Oxford UP, 2015)

An Aesthetic of Obscenity, by Jeff Nuttall, ed. with Jay Jeff Jones (Verbivoracious Press, 2016)

Bomb Culture, by Jeff Nuttall, ed with Jay Jeff Jones (Strange Attractor Press, 2018)

D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation Art, Culture and Ethics in Black and White, ed. with Jenny Barett and Ian Scott (Manchester UP, 2022)

Harold Norse: Poet Maverick, Gay Laureate, ed. with A. Robert Lee (Clemson UP/ Liverpool UP, 2022)

Walking in the Dark: James Baldwin, My Father, and Me (Manchester UP, 2024)

I am the co-editor of three journal special issues:

James Baldwin: A Special Issue, ed. with Rich Blint (African American Review 46.4, 2013)

The Artist of the Future Age: William Blake, Neo-Romanticism, Counterculture and Now, ed. with Luke Walker (Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 98.1, 2022)

The Mimeograph Revolution: Little Poetry Magazines and the Avant-garde, ed. with James Riley (Textual Practice, 38.6, 2024).

James Baldwin Review

In 2014 I co-founded James Baldwin Review with Justin A. Joyce and Dwight A. McBride (both at Washington University in St. Louis). In 2025 the journal won the award for Best Special Issue from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals.

The journal, which is published annually, is open access and can be viewed here.

James Baldwin and Britain – AHRC Standard Grant

Between 2024-2027 I will be working as the principal investigator on "James Baldwin and Britain" with Isabel Taube (University of Manchester), Rob Waters (Queen Mary, University of London) and Kennetta Hammond Perry (Northwestern University). The AHRC-funded project explores Baldwin's complicated relationship to Britain, and to British culture. The project outputs include a symposium, two collections of essays, an oral history project, two film seasons (Barbican, London & HOME, Manchester) and several journal articles. 

Exhibitions

I was the co-curator, with Jay Jeff Jones, of the exhibition, Off Beat: Jeff Nuttall and the International Underground, which was on display at the John Rylands Library, Manchester (2016-17). I was also the co-curator of an exhibition on Nuttall at Flat Time House in London, The Pyschopathic Now: Jeff Nuttall's Bomb Culture and the International Underground (2018-19).

Manchester University Press

I am chair of Manchester University Press’s editorial committee and I am a series editor for The British Pop Archive and Thinking with James Baldwin.

Podcasts and Radio

I have contributed to a number of podcasts and Radio pieces, including: 

New Books Network: on James Baldwin, My Father, and Me (2025)

'Underground and on the Run,' TLS Podcast (April 22, 2021)

'James Baldwin: Love as a Battle,' Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (2020)

Radio 4's Great Lives - with Alvin Hall on James Baldwin  (2015)

James Baldwin Review