Currently the chair of the Department of English, Professor Reed is particularly fascinated by the strange dichotomies of order and chaos in eighteenth-century British literature. He regularly ponders the construction of widely held conceptions (or misconceptions) of gender and race, the impact of privilege on writing, and the role of writing in either reinforcing or challenging the values of a particular culture. His interests include British travel writers, masculinity studies, the Restoration and Eighteenth-Century, and African-American literature. He has published on Samuel Johnson, George Eliot, Emily Dickinson, and Richard Wright.