Dr. Collins specializes in late nineteenth-century American fiction and the geohumanities. Her research investigates how geographic models developed to explain the material world can also be productively used in exploring literary worlds. More broadly, her research and teaching interests include American realism and naturalism, proletarian literature, class and labor studies, landscape studies, and theories of space and place.

Dr. Collins also serves as Director of First-Year Writing and the Director of the First-Year Academic Experience.