My research is in three areas: the philosophy of literature (with an emphasis on early modern English literature), the philosophy of theater, and animal-ethics. I try to turn both my teaching and research into forms of border-crossings, in which sensitivities and motivations from more than one academic discipline interlace. 

   The philosophy of literature takes up much of my research and teaching (I am a trained philosopher, teaching in literature departments). Three of my books relate to philosophizing through and with literary works: Double Vision: Moral Philosophy and Shakespearean Drama (Princeton, 2006), Ascent: Philosophy and Paradise Lost (OUP, 2017), and Just Literature: Philosophical Criticism and Justice (Routledge, 2019). I have also edited Shakespeare's Hamlet: Philosophical Perspectives (OUP, 2017). A recent essay of mine in this context discusses friendship in Shakespeare.

     My Acts: Theater, Philosophy and the Performing Self (University of Michigan Press, 2014) explored philosophical dimensions of dramatic acting. The book addressed self-dramatization, on the stage (or off it). The project included work on theatrical role-playing, discussing topics such as repetition, drama, acting, puppetry, masochism, voice, anorexia, pornography and the relatioship between acting and ethics (the last essay has received an award from The Philosophical Quarterly). After the book, new work of mine in this domain includes an essay on giving focus in acting, and on roleplaying in Shakespeare. I also have a forthcoming essay on creativity and imagination in acting in the Oxford Handbook on Imagination and Creativity, and another essay aiming to use insights from acting to illuminate the puzzle of imaginative resistance. 

     I am also interested in moral aspects of human-animal relations. My book Ethics and the Beast (Princeton, 2007) probed only ethical dimensions of this issue. I have since become interested by literary representation of animals. I regularly teach a seminar on this latter topic, and have contributed a chapter on the depiction of animals in literary works to the Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Animals. 

     My new project is devoted to neoliberalism and literature. The project will continue my work on justice and literature. One essay from this project is forthcoming in Philosophy and Literature, and another will appear in a collection on Empathy and the Aesthetic Mind. 

     I have recently began formulating some thoughts relating to the philosophy of painting. An essay devoted to the artist-model rapport has just been published in Aesthetic Investigations.