I am Professor of American Literature at the University of Manchester, where I have taught since 2012. Before then, I taught at the University of York and Staffordshire University, as well as 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, Tom Waits, William S. Burroughs, D.W. Griffith and jazz and Pentecostalism. I have also published on film noir, the Mimeograph Revolution, William Blake and the British polymath Jeff Nuttall.

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. 

Current Writing

• a chapter on Patti Smith and William S. Burroughs for the French publisher L'Herne;
• a chapter on Beat and avant-garde women's writing, which includes discussion of ruth weiss, Joanne Kyger, and Diane di Prima;
• co-editiorship of a volume of essays on James Baldwin and Britain for Manchester University Press. 

I am also slowly writing a book on the subject of failure and the avant-garde during the 1960s and 1970s, which includes exploring a range of transatlantic artists and countercultural figures, among them Gustav Metzger, William S. Burroughs, Alexander Trocchi, Jean Tingueley, Yoko Ono, and Niki de Saint Phalle.

Teaching

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

I have taught courses on 19th and 20th century British and American literature at BA and MA levels. At the University of Manchester I have taught courses including: Introduction to American Studies; Twentieth Century American Literature; From Jamestown to James Brown: African-American History and Culture; Beat Writing; Twentieth Century African American Literature; James Baldwin in Context: Race, Sexuality and Activism. At MA-level, I have taught on courses including: Radical Subcultures; American Transnational Literature and Culture: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Cold War; and Popular Music and Identity.  

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, Volume 10 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.

Callloo and Modernism/Modernity

Between 1999 and 2002 I was managing editor of the journal Modernism/ Modernity.  I was the book review editor for Callaloo between 2007 and 2011. 

Non-academic Writing

My writing has been published in the Guardian (reviews, articles, obituaries), Beat Scene, Byline Times, The Conversation, 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 essays 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 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, a database tracking references to Baldwin's appearances in British print media, 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) - on Richard Wright's novel, The Man Who Lived Underground

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

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

A selection of James Baldwin Review covers