English
Visiting Assistant Professor of English
Education:
Ph.D. University of Mississippi 2020
MA Florida Gulf Coast University 2014
BA Florida Gulf Coast University 2012
Courses:
ENGL 170: Multicultural Literature
ENGL 133: Crime and Punishment
ENGL 233: American Drama 1940-Present
ENGL 352: American Literature After 1865
ENGL 325: Thinking Queer / Reading Queer
ENGL 354: American Literature Since 1945
Honors/Awards:
Weixlmann Prize, Mention of Honor, Best Essay in 20th and 21st Century African American
Literature and Culture, African American Review, 2020
American Council of Learned Societies, Dissertation Completion Fellowship, 2019
Publications
“‘Envisioning the future, remembering the past’: A Neo-Abolitionist Reading of Suzan-Lori Parks’s Fucking A” African American Review, Volume 53, Issue 1 (2020)
“Redefining Our Futures: Recent Abolitionist Poetic Practice.” forthcoming in Spoon River Poetry Review
Professional and Personal:
I teach courses in American literature with specializations in multicultural, African American, and queer literatures. My courses aim to have students examine the relationship between literature and justice. I encourage students to engage in critical and creative thinking to trace how writers depict and resist injustice with particular attention to theories of gender, race, and class identities.
My research primarily focuses on the relationship between contemporary literature and mass incarceration in the United States. I examine poets, novelists, and playwrights from this era to reveal a rich literary tradition of resistance to incarceration and state violence. These writers radically imagine alternatives to policing, prisons, and violence
When I am not teaching and researching, I spend my time with my partner, Kate, and our pets, a Blue Heeler named Bert and a cat named Bamber. We like to explore local parks and thrift stores, garden, and participate in social justice organizations.