Assistant Professor (Limited-Term), Department of English, Elon University, 2023-present

Adjunct Instructor, Initiative for Science & Society, Duke University, 2022-present

Assistant Lecturer, Department of Languages & Literatures, Sacred Heart University, 2019-2022

Program Coordinator, Humanities Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, 2016-18

Ph.D. in English, Duke University, 2016

Certificate in College Teaching

Certificate in Feminist Studies

M.A. in English, Brooklyn College, CUNY, 2008

B.A. in English and Anthropology, University of Texas, 2005

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

“A Swamp in Name Only: Imagined Geography, Abandonment, and the Archive in W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Quest of the Silver Fleece.”NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 56, no. 3, 2023.

“Abandoned Being: The Aesthetics of Inhabiting in Meridel Le Sueur’s The Girl.” Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 67, no. 3, 2021, pp. 317-344.

Edited Works

How Literature Understands Poverty, special issue of American Literature, vol. 94, no. 3, 2022. [Co-edited and introduction written with Joseph Entin, Kinohi Nishikawa, and Irvin Joseph Hunt].

Reviews

“Poverty Futures.” Contemporary Literature, vol. 63, no. 4, 2024.

Review of Chang and Eng Reconnected: The Original Siamese Twins in American Culture, by Cynthia Wu, Imperfect Unions: Staging Miscegenation in U.S. Drama and Fiction, by Diana Rebekkah Paulin, and Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century, by Kyla Wazana Tompkins. American Literature, vol. 86, no. 2, 2013, pp. 394-396.

Works in Progress

Monograph: Abandoned Subjects: The Sociality of Survival in Modern American Literature (under advance contract)

2021 | University Research and Creativity Grant, Sacred Heart University

2019 | National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute Grant, Newberry Library

2018 | Digital Projects for the Public Discovery Grant, National Endowment for the Humanities

2018 | Health and Humanities Pop-Up Institute Grant, Office of the Vice President of Research, University of Texas at Austin

2014 | Feibusch Family Summer Fellowship, Duke University

2012, 2013 | Summer Research Fellowship, Duke University

2009-2015 | Dean’s Graduate Fellowship

2024-2026 | Community-Based Learning Course Development Grant, Kernodle Center for Civic Life, Elon University

2024 | Community Partner Initiative Grant, Kernodle Center for Civic Life, Elon University

2023-2024 | Community-Based Learning Scholar, Kernodle Center for Civic Life Elon University

2012-2013 | Preparing Future Faculty Fellowship, Duke University, faculty mentor Michele Ware, North Carolina Central University

“Song of the Poor: Negotiating Worth in Anzia Yezierska’s Salome of the Tenements,” Working-Class Studies Association, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, December 2-5, 2025 [upcoming].

“Personhood, Self-Valorization and the Dream of ‘Making Things Better’ in Anzia Yezierska’s Arrogant Beggar,” American Studies Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 20-23, 2025 [upcoming].

“Potential Plenty: Genre and John Steinbeck’s, Sanora Babb’s, and Tom Collin’s Dust Bowl Writing,” Modernist Studies Association, Brooklyn, NY, October 26-29, 2023.

“Swamp Work,” C19, Coral Gables, FL, April 2, 2022.

“Care Not Given: Weathering, Addiction, and Women’s Health in Jesmyn Ward’s Bois Sauvage,” Modern Language Association, Seattle, WA, January 11, 2020 [co-organized special session].

“Not Quite Digital Cartography,” Digital Humanities Conference, Mexico City, MX, June 26-29, 2018 [co-organized panel].

“Using Media to Develop Humanities Narratives,” National Humanities Conference, Boston, MA, November 2-5, 2017 [co-organized working group].

“Specters of Debt: The Foreclosing of the Frontier in Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!” Working Class Studies Association Conference, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, May 31-June 2, 2017.

“A Swamp in Name Only: Black Belt Geographies and the Archive,” Modern Language Association, Austin, TX, January 8, 2016.

 “Digital Memories and Objects,” Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory, Michigan State University, MI, May 28, 2015 [co-organized panel].

 “Fugitive Ecologies: Reproduction, Relation, and Exchange in W.E.B. Dubois’s The Quest of the Silver Fleece,” American Comparative Literature Association, New York University, NY, March 20-23, 2014.

 “Abandoned Publics: Sentimentalism, Proletarianism, Modernism and Meridel LeSueur’s The Girl,” Alternative Modernisms: An International Interdisciplinary Conference, Cardiff University, WL, May 17, 2013.

 “Economies of the Rent Body in Pietro Di Donato’s Christ in Concrete,” American Comparative Literature Association, Brown University, Providence, RI, March 29-April 1, 2012.

“‘I do not want the judgment of any man’: The Unstable Animal-Human Boundary in Linguistics and Kafka’s ‘A Report to an Academy,’” Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900, University of Louisville, KY, February 22, 2008.

“Black and Indigenous Ecologies,” led by Karyn Recollet and Tiffany Lethabo King, C19 Seventh Biennial Conference, Coral Gables, FL, April 2, 2022

“Making Modernism: Literature and Culture in Chicago, 1893-1955,” led by Liesel Olson, National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL, July 8-August 3, 2019

“Media Between Data and Experience” led by Mark Hansen, Cornell School of Criticism and Theory, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, June 15-July 25, 2014

“Queer Imaginaries,” Sexuality Summer School, University of Manchester, UK, May 21-24, 2013

“The U.S. in a Global Context” led by Melani McAlister, The Clinton Institute of American Studies Summer Study, City College, Dublin, IR, July 10-16, 2011

“Text Encoding Fundamentals and their Application,” led by Constance Crompton, Lee Zickel and Emily Murphy, Digital Humanities Summer Institute, University of Victoria, British Columba, CA, June 4-8, 2018

 “Geographic Information Systems for the Humanities,” led by Ian Gregory and Cathryn Brandon, Digital Humanities Summer Institute, University of Victoria, British Columbia, CA, June 5-9, 2017

Ph.D. Lab in Digital Knowledge, co-directed by David Bell and Cathy Davidson, Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University, 2012-2014

Advancing Equity Summer Institute, Elon University, Elon, NC, June 11-13, 2024

Elon University

Writing: Argument and Inquiry (ENG1100), Fall and Spring, 2023-2026

Literature from the Margins (ENG1233), Winter 2024, Winter 2025

Duke University

Imagining American Health: Cultural Texts in Policy Contexts (SCISOC199FS), Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024

Wild (E90), Spring 2013

Poetics of Poverty (W101), Fall 2011

Sacred Heart University

What Is the Common Good? (FYWS125), Fall 2021

Literature of Illness and Healing (E260), Fall 2021

Health, Poverty, and Literature (ENG201), Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021

Literary Research & Writing (ENG210), Spring 2021

American Migrations (FYWS125), Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Spring 2021

Literature Capstone (ENG390A), Fall 2020

American Literature for Elementary Education (ENG245), Fall 2019

University of Texas at Austin

African American Literature and Culture (E314/AFR317), Fall 2017

Brooklyn College

Composition II (E1012), Summer 2009

Composition I (E1010), Fall 2008, Spring 2009

Other Teaching Experience

Medical Humanities: Close-Reading, Expressive Writing, University of Texas at Austin, Spring 2017, Spring 2018 [Co-led series of workshops on close-reading and expressive writing for medical students]

Pedagogy Forums, Duke University, 2013-14 [Organized and moderated series of workshops designed to prepare graduate students to teach their first English course]