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Since coming to Kent State in 1968, he has been teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in American literature, African American literature, and linguistics.  He has directed doctoral dissertations on American writers, including Melville, Hawthorne, Twain, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Dreiser, Faulkner, Kerouac, Wright, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Ishmael Reed, Charles Johnson, Colson Whitehead, and some Chinese and Chinese American novelists, and Korean poets. He has been a loyal fan of the Cleveland Indians, Cavaliers, and Browns. His hobbies also include playing tennis

Books

• East-West Literary Imagination: Cultural Exchanges from W.B. Yeats to Toni Morrison. U of Missouri P, 2015.
• Richard Wright:A Documented Chronology, 1908-1960, with Toru Kiuchi. McFarland, 2014.
• Richard Wright and Haiku.  U of Missouri P, 2014.
• Haiku and Modernist Poetics.  Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.  Recipient of the Haiku Society of America’s Mildred Kanteman Memorial Book Award, 2010.
• Cross-Cultural Visions in African American Modernism: From Spatial Narrative to Jazz Haiku.  Ohio State UP, 2006.
• Richard Wright and Racial Discourse.  U of Missouri P, 1996.
• Young Dreiser: A Critical Study.  Fairleigh Dickinson UP / Associated UPs, 1980.

Editions

• Theodor Dreiser’s Uncollected Magazine Articles, 1897-1902.  U of Delaware P / Associated UPs, 2003.
• Art, Music, and Literature, 1897-1902, by Theodore Dreiser.  U of Illinois P, 2001 / reprint/paperback, 2007.
• Haiku: This Other World  by Richard Wright, ed. with Robert L. Tener.  Arcade, 1998 / reprint/paperback, Random House, 2000.  Haiku: Kono Bessekai, trans. Japanese, Toru Kiuchi and Michiko Watanabe. Tokyo: Sairyusha, 2007. The Academy of American Poets’ nomination as the top selection for the 1999 National Poetry Month.
• Selected English Writings of Yone Noguchi: An East-West Literary Assimilation.  Vol. 1: Poetry, vol. 2: Prose.  Fairleigh Dickinson UP / Associated UPs, 1990, 1992.
• Selected Magazine Articles of Theodore Dreiser: Life and Art in the American 1890s.  2 vols.  Fairleigh Dickinson UP / Associated UPs, 1985, 1987. Recipient of a Choice magazine Outstanding Academic Book of the Year Award, 1988.

Research Areas

• American literature
• African American literature
• Cross-cultural studies