952-446-4279
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 cultures 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 Macbeth 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 also teach in Crown College’s Honors Program exploring the rich connections between literature, culture, philosophy, theology, history, anthropology, and the fine arts.
I am passionate about taking St. Anselm’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.
“Mobilizing Faith: Haunting Doubt and Antislavery Politics in Hannah Crafts’s The Bondwoman’s Narrative,” Literature & Belief 43.1 (2025)
“Bret Harte’s ‘Ah Sin’: Irish Catholics, Chinese Immigrants, and Heathen Others in ‘Plain Language from Truthful James’,” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes & Reviews (2024)
“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.
“‘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.
