My research is situated at the intersection of Black feminism, feminist and queer literary studies, and the medical humanities. My dissertation examines how transatlantic literary writers rejected the institution of motherhood by critiquing the racialized and classed conditions of reproductive healthcare across the twentieth century. I focus on marginalized experiences of pregnancy, abortion, and birth depicted in the work of Nella Larsen, Jean Rhys, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, and Toni Morrison. I show how their portrayal of local and historically specific reproductive practices foregrounds the mutually formative relationship between racial and economic hierarchies and medical practice.
I received a BA in English Literature from Goldsmiths, University of London (2014) and an rMA in Cultural Analysis from the University of Amsterdam (2017). I hold graduate certificates from the Program in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies and Penn's Center for Teaching and Learning. I was a coordinator for the Gender and Sexuality Studies reading group (2020-2021) as well as President of the Graduate English Association (2020-2021). For the AY 2022-23 was the Graduate Associate for the Program in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies. My writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the James Baldwin Review, QED: A Journal of Queer Worldmaking, Criticism, Routledge Companion to Queer Literary Studies, and Medical Humanities.
In the fall of 2024 I will begin my position as the Janice G. Doty Lecturer in the Medical Humanities at Rice University.