 In 1985 he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for a year of study at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece and in 1988 he participated in the summer program at the American Academy in Rome.He earned his PhD in 1990 from the University of Texas at Austin for his thesis on "The Kypria and its early reception".He worked from 1991 to the time of his death at the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literature, and Cultures of the University of Kentucky.