I'm happy to announce that I will join the Northeastern University English Department in the Fall of 2012. I deeply appreciate the support I've received from my colleagues at St. Norbert College over the past two years. I will miss them and this institution, which truly lives its mission of communio and has made our family so welcome in De Pere.

Though leaving St. Norbert is bittersweet, I am excited about this move for several reasons, both professional and personal:

  1. At Northeastern I will join a group of faculty who will plan and found a new Center for Digital Humanities and Computational Social Sciences. The new Center will have a physical space on campus as early as this fall—in which case my office will be in the Center, along with those of several other affiliated faculty members. Since leaving Virginia, I've missed the rich, collaborative community of its Scholars Lab. I hope to help foster the growth of such a community at Northeastern, and to join the larger community of digital humanists in the Boston area.
  2. I'll teach more digital humanities courses. Approximately half of my teaching will be allocated to Center-related courses, and I should teach both a graduate and undergraduate DH course next year. I've greatly enjoyed teaching "Technologies of Text" this semester, and I'm thrilled by the chance to teach DH courses more regularly at Northeastern.
  3. I look forward to delving into Boston's amazing archives. My scholarship depends heavily on archival research, and for a scholar of nineteenth-century American literature and culture, there are few (if any) better places to work than New England. I look forward to working at places like the Boston Public Library, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Harvard Library.
  4. On a more personal note, our family is eager to move back East and closer to grandparents, aunts, and uncles. It's been tougher than we expected living two day's drive—or one very expensive plane flight—from family. In Boston, we'll be only one day's drive from my parents, and more easily connected by plane or train to other relatives on the East Coast. The kids, of course, also can't wait to explore Boston: its museums, zoo, aquarium, Red Sox games, and myriad other activities.

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This summer will be a busy one. We plan to spend much of it in Virginia, making occasional excursions up to Boston to tour neighborhoods and find a place to live. If you're in the Boston area and can help us with that endeavor, please let me know!