Professional and Biographical Information
Research
Veil and Vow: Marriage Matters in Contemporary
African American Culture
University of North Carolina Press | Gender and American Culture Series
Supported by the American Association of University Women Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship, the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Social Sciences at Duke University, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Institute for Citizens and Scholars Fellowship, my book project, Veil and Vow: Marriage Matters in Contemporary African American Culture (University of North Carolina Press | Gender and American Culture Series), places familiar, politicized questions about the crisis of African American marriage in conversation with a rich, but underexamined cultural archive of fiction, film, and music.
Veil and Vow: Marriage Matters in Contemporary African American Culture | Finalist, 2021 Outstanding First Book Prize, Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Disapora
My research has been published in Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society and in African American Culture and Society After Rodney King and my broad scholarly interests include late twentieth-century African American fiction, film, and music.
Fellowships & Awards
Invited Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence of the Black Feminist Theory Project, Brown University, Pembroke Center for Research and Teaching on Women, 2017-2018
American Association of University Women Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship, 2017-2018
Mellon Foundation's Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship, 2017
Duke University Mellon Mays Summer Institute on Tenure and Professional Advancement (SITPA) Scholar, 2015-2017
Mellon Faculty Seminar, Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, 2012
Robert E. Keiter 1957 Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor, Amherst College, Sexuality, Women’s and Gender Studies Department, 2012-2014
Five College Dissertation Fellowship, Amherst College, Women’s and Gender Studies Department, 2011-2012.
Dissertation Fellowship, Middle Tennessee State University, English Department, 2010-2011.
Abraham Lincoln Graduate Fellowship, University of Illinois-Chicago, 2011
Abraham Lincoln Graduate Fellowship, University of Illinois-Chicago, 2008
Grace Holt Memorial Award, University of Illinois-Chicago, 2008
School of Criticism & Theory Residency Award, Cornell University, 2006
Diversifying Faculty in Higher Education Fellowship, Illinois Board of Education, 2004
Teaching
I teach a wide range of courses that explore a mosaic of African American literature, art, music, and film. My “Black Women’s Narratives and Counter-narratives” critical and creative visual essay assignment is featured in the February 5, 2014 issue of the New York Times. Black Women's Narratives is also listed in the June 2016 issue of Elle magazine as one of the “63 College Classes That Give Us Hope for the Next Generation.”