Education

  • Ph.D. English; Certificate, Women’s Studies, Emory University, 2007
  • B.A. English, Mount Holyoke College, magna cum laude, 2002

Academic Positions

  • Associate Professor: School of Literature, Media, & Communication, Georgia Tech (2017-)
  • Associate Professor: Department of English, Auburn University (2013-2017)
  • Assistant Professor: Department of English, Auburn University (2007-2013)
  • Instructor: Department of English, Spelman College (2006-2007)

Selected Publications

Books

  • The Crunk Feminist Collection. Co-edited collection with Brittney C. Cooper and Robin M. Boylorn. (New York: The Feminist Press, 2017).
  • Sycorax’s Daughters, co-edited fiction collection with Kinitra D. Brooks and Linda Addison. (San Francisco: Cedar Grove Press, 2017).
  •  Close Kin and Distant Relatives: The Paradox of Respectability in Black Women’s Literature (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014). Reviewed in Callaloo (Winter 2015).

Articles and Book Chapters

  • “‘Everything is real. It’s just not as you see it’: Imagination, Utopia, and Afrofuturist Feminism in Octavia E. Butler’s ‘The Book of Martha.’” Accepted and forthcoming in Afrofuturism 2.0: The Black Speculative Arts Movement: Black Futurity, Art+Design, edited by Reynaldo Anderson and Clint Fluker, Lexington Books. Winter 2018.
  • “More than Human: Black Feminisms of the Future in Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories” in The Black Scholar, 46:2, Summer 2016, pp. 33-45.
  • “‘Sisters separated for much too long’: Women’s Friendship and Power in Toni Morrison’s ‘Recitatif,’” in Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 32:1, Spring 2013, pp. 159-180.
  • “The Stage Hip Hop Feminism Built: A New Directions Essay,” Co-authored with Brittney C. Cooper and Aisha Durham, in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 38:3, Spring 2013, pp. 721-737.
  • “A Past Not Pure, But Stifled: Vexed Legacies of Leadership in Toni Morrison’s Love,” in South Atlantic Quarterly, 112:2, Spring 2013, pp. 319-338.
  • “Black Girls are from the Future: Afrofuturist Feminism in Octavia E. Butler’s Fledgling,” in WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, 40: 3&4, Fall/Winter 2012, pp. 146-166.
  • “Stunned Throats and Vexed Voices: Ambivalence and Intertextuality in The Bluest Eye and Push,” The Griot: The Journal of African American Studies, 31:1, Spring 2012, pp. 58-70.

Selected Public Scholarship & Social Commentary

Research and Teaching Interests

  • Afrofuturism and the Black Speculative Arts Movement
  • Gender and Black Feminist Theory
  • 20th and 21st Century African American and Caribbean Literature and Theory

Selected Awards, Grants, & Fellowships

  •  PULSE Community Building Award, Harvard Black Law Student Association, 2017
  • Advisor, American Library Association’s Great Stories Book Club (NEH Funded), 2017
  • Digital Integrative Liberal Arts Center Fellow, Georgia Institute of Technology, Spring 2017
  • Dream Defender, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, 2015
  • Summer Departmental Support, English Department, Auburn University, 2013
  • Outstanding Teaching & Research in Women’s Studies Award, Auburn University, 2011
  • Title VI Competitive Summer Salary Assistance Program Grant, Auburn University, 2008