Biography
Assistant Instructional Professor, Master of Arts Program in the Humanities, Department of English Language and Literature, The College
Affiliate Faculty, Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture
I received my PhD in English from the University of Chicago in 2015, where I have taught courses in comparative ethnic literature, the American novel and photography, and literary culture and urbanism. My undergraduate degrees from Mills College are in English and Ethnic Studies. My dissertation, American Snapshot: Urban Space and the Minor Archive, argues that minor and counter-culture movements in the 20th century US produce new versions of archiving in response to social crisis, particularly through the mode of the photo-text. My current monograph, On Other Loathing, explores race, misanthropy, and negative affect in the ethnic American novel. I am currently at work on two essay projects; one is a literary genealogy of the kitchenette apartment in American urban space and the other a piece on the western and liberal sentimentality in the 1950s. I have also volunteered in the curatorial department at the Chicago History Museum and been a Newberry Library fellow in the Ayer Collection of American Indian Studies. I enjoy sewing, thrift shopping, and Windy City Soul Club, and am the co-host of the podcast “Better Read than Dead: Literature from a Left Perspective.” I am a member of Faculty Forward/SEIU Local 73, the contingent faculty union at the University of Chicago.
Co-host of the podcast “Better Read than Dead: Literature from a Left Perspective.”
Current/Upcoming Courses:
California Fictions: Literature and Cinema (Spring 2025)
This course will consider works of literature and cinema from 1884-2018 that take place in Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, the Inland Empire, and rural California to offer a case study for everyday life and critical space theory. Beginning with Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona and ending with Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother you, we will also consider how “the west” provides an opportunity for reconsidering canon formation and genre.