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Ph.D. English, The University of Iowa, 2021
M.A. English, The University of Iowa, 2019
B.A. English and History, Secondary Education, University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire, 2014
I am interested in writers of the African Diaspora, African American literary cultures, indigenous oratures and literatures, and colonial and nineteenth-century American letters. Such literary foci complement my research on the histories and letters of the post-17th century West. Most notably, I study the rise of secular modernity and its discontents, religious identity and spiritual experience, theories of human personhood, and race and ethnicity. I am a true eclectic, however, when it comes to English, ranging from my passion for the classics such as Virgil’s Aeneid and Shakespeare’s Henry V to my fascination with grammar debates over “Oxford” commas and adverbial modifiers to my pure enjoyment of contemporary lyricists (e.g., Chance the Rapper), popular artists (e.g., Taylor Swift), and public orators (e.g., Cornell West).
I am passionate about taking Augustine’s dictum fides quaerens intellectum (“faith seeking understanding”) seriously, bridging together the life of faith and the life of the mind as they converge to inform and form us into the kinds of kingdom people the Spirit calls us to be. It is a joy to teach literature, writing, research, and grammar courses that help students build the kingdom through the powers of language and meaning: as close readers of Pride & Prejudice and the Gospel of Mark, as compelling writers of a classical argument and an inspiring sermon, as confident speakers in their professions, pulpits, and pews, as careful listeners of others’ voices and ideas, and as critical researchers tackling modern injustices inside and outside the church.
“A Secular Covenant: Mosaic Covenantal Thought and the Jewish Working-Class in Abraham Cahan’s ‘A Ghetto Wedding,’ The Journal of the Short Story in English 73.1 (2021): 4-26.
“Fugitive Slave ‘Ex-Pat’: The Myth of Northern Black Freedom in Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” North Carolina Literary Review 29.1 (2020): 6-21. Special Issue, African-American Literature & Transnational Expatriates from North Carolina
“‘White Slaves’ as ‘Black Slaves’: Re-evaluating the 19th c. English Working-Class Autobiography in the (Con)texts of Transatlantic Abolitionism,” Keywords: A Journal of Cultural Materialism 17.1 (2019): 109-127.
Dissertation: “The Godforsaken Slave: Black Doubt and the Problem of Evil in American Antislavery Literature, 1760-1865”
