Much of my research has focused on poetry, and on some poets in particular; the texts remain as fascinating to me as when I first discovered them as a student, and each reading reveals something new. My first book, Leaving Parnassus: The Lyric Subject in Verlaine and Rimbaud, considers Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine and their complex relationship with Parnassian poetry of the mid century; formal and thematic elements show how they simultaneously emulated and undermined the Parnassian model, ultimately surpassing it and paving the way for the innovations of the 1880s. In Authority in Crisis in French Literature, 1850–1880, my second book, a series of close readings shows how tensions from the Second Empire and the 1871 Paris Commune played out in theatre, poetry, and short stories, raising questions about authorship through literary collaboration, parody, destabilised poetic form, and narrative voice. I’ve also directed several collections of essays and produced critical editions and translations. As the editor of the scholarly journal Nineteenth-Century French Studies, I follow the ongoing scholarship in my field very closely, and I take great pleasure from working with colleagues and helping them get their best work to print. I have recently completed a biography of Rimbaud and continue to work on literature during the Second Empire and around the time of the Paris Commune, including Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Verlaine.