Statement of Research
My research is interdisciplinary and analyzes contemporary African American fiction, Black popular culture, and cultural studies. I am generally interested in representations of Black people, particularly Black boys and men, across multiple texts. I assess their ability to tell their own stories, own intersecting identities, and navigate a world that often silences their voices, renders them invisible, surveils them due to their societal hypervisibility, and destroys their bodies. I have a vested interest in how fiction and media play a role in Black men’s ability to reinscribe their narratives. [Full Research Statement]
BOY MAN
My dissertation, Boy Man: Multiple Literacies and Narrating Black Southern Boyhood in the Works of Kiese Laymon, examines how Kiese Laymon utilizes multiple literacies to aid himself and his Black boy characters in navigating the contemporary U.S. South and combat notions of illiteracy grounded in historically racist foundations. I argue that these literacies used by Laymon — cultural, language, and cipher literacies — allow him and his characters to navigate adolescence and transgenerational trauma. [Full Dissertation Abstract]
Curricula vita.
Movie Review
“Marxist collective grapples with the past in ‘The Inheritance’” - Tallahassee Democrat, 2021
Book Review
Boondock Kollage: Stories from the Hip-Hop South by Regina N. Bradley, Southeast Review 36.1, Fall 2017