The question that informs most of my writing is the position of literature, against other forms of knowledge, in the textual construction of meaning. I teach courses on a wide range of seventeenth-century forms, and also make regular appearances in the Nonfiction Writing Program and in the Interdisciplinary Program in Literature, Science, and the Arts. Currently, I am completing a second book of cultural history, titled Nature's Dominion: Writing English Bodies, 1660-85, which cuts a winding track from my Origin and Authority in Seventeenth-Century England: Bacon, Milton, Butler (1994). My other major project is about knowledge production and the transformation of disciplinarity in the American university.