- A.B. cum laude, Georgetown University, 1960
- Woodrow Wilson Fellowship at Princeton University, 1960-61
- Ph.D. in English, Princeton University, 1964
- Instructor in English, University of Virginia, 1963-65
- Assistant Professor of English, Dartmouth College, 1965-70
- Associate Professor of English, Dartmouth College, 1970-76
- Professor of English, Dartmouth College, 1976-2004
- English Department Chair, Dartmouth College, 1978-1981
- National Endowment for the Humanities Grant to direct Research Conference on Literature and the Visual Arts at Dartmouth, October 5-7, 1984
- Director of NEH Summer Seminar on English Romantic Literature and the Visual Arts at Dartmouth, Summer 1987, Summer 1989
- NEH Grant to direct Research Conference on Representations of the French Revolution in Literature, Art, and Historiography, Dartmouth College, July 13-15, 1989
- NEH Fellowship for book-length project on the poetics of ekphrasis, 1991
- Board of Trustees, Vermont Academy, 1992-2001.
- Raised funds to launch the Dartmouth College Faculty Fellowship, Spring 1994
- Council Member, Association of Literary Scholars and Critics, 1996-99
- Frederick Sessions Beebe Professor in the Art of Writing, Dartmouth College 1997-2004
- Inducted as Honorary Member of Phi Beta Kappa at Dartmouth, June 13, 1998
- Professor of English Emeritus, Dartmouth College, 2004 - present
- Founding Editor, Review 19 an Online Review of New Books on Nineteenth-Century English and American Literature Launched in September 2009, this review has posted over 600 reviews to date and drawn over 200,000 unique visitors.
- Committee of Judges for the Phi Beta Kappa Society Christian Gauss Award, 2011-13