Professor Buinicki joined the Valparaiso University English faculty in 2004 after teaching for a year at Grinnell College. He earned his B.A. and M.A. at the University of Northern Colorado and received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa in 2003.

His teaching specialties include early and nineteenth-century American literature, literary theory, and philanthropy in American culture.  In his course "Traditions of Giving and Serving in American Life," students not only read literary works, but they also learn about the Valparaiso community and its challenges and opportunities.  After a semester of research and discussion, the students allocate a charitable gift to area non-profit agencies.  Last year, with generous funding from the Project on Civic Reflection, the students awarded $1,000 to three local organizations. 

In 2006, Professor Buinicki's book Negotiating Copyright: Authorship and the Discourse of Literary Property Rights in Nineteenth-Century America was published by Routledge. He has also published articles in American Literary History, American Literary Realism, and the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, and essays in A Companion to Mark Twain (Blackwell, 2006) and American History through Literature (Scribners, 2006).  Professor Buinicki is currently completing work on a book-length study of Walt Whitman and Reconstruction.