I hail from the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. I earned a Ph.D. in African American and African Diaspora Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, where I also earned my M.A. in African American Studies. I completed my B.A. (magna cum laude) in American Studies at the University of Richmond. I hold many intellectual interests and enjoy opportunities to facilitate learning, whether in the classroom, at a conference or workshop, or in a consulting partnership.
I am Assistant Professor of African American Literature and Culture in the English Department at Georgetown University. From January 2023 to December 2024, I am the Lead Principal Investigator for the Mellon Sawyer Seminar on “Creative Placemaking, Black Restorative Ecologies, and Black Spatial Futures.” In 2019-20, I was an inaugural CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow in African American Data Curation at the University of Delaware with the Colored Conventions Project. In 2018-19, I served as a Postdoctoral Fellow in African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis where I developed and taught interdisciplinary courses on the Harlem and Chicago Renaissance periods and black home spaces. I have contributed research and expertise to three large-scale digital humanities projects focused on the 18th and 19th centuries. My work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Quarterly, Environment and Society, Meridians, African American Review, and The Common Reader, and my research has been supported by the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. My dissertation was shortlisted for the Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize by the American Studies Association.
Read more about my research and writing, check out my upcoming talks, and reach out to book me for speaking engagements and consulting or other general inquiries.