Professor Burnham specializes in early American literature, transoceanic early modern literature, Native American literature, and the novel.

She is the author of “Folded Selves: Colonial American Writing in the World System” (2007) and “Captivity and Sentiment: Cultural Exchange in American Literature, 1682-1865” (1997). She is the editor of “The Female American”(Second edition, 2014) and of “A Separate Star: Selected Writings of Helen Hunt Jackson” (2008). She is currently completing a book, “The Revolutionary Pacific: Transoceanic American Writing and the Calculus of Risk.”

Professor Burnham received her bachelor of arts degree in English from Trinity College, and both her master's degree and Ph.D. in English from SUNY at Buffalo.