Doctoral Candidate in English & Women's and Gender Studies
she/her/hers
About
Education
I earned my B.A. in English Literature with a minor in Africana Studies from the University of Toledo in 2016 and my M.A. in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan in 2019. I plan to defend my dissertation "Desiring Bodies, Imagining Selves: Black Trans* Narratives and the Erotics of Imagination" in Winter 2023.
Research Interests
My current research interests include 20th and 21st century African American fiction, life writing studies, Black feminist theory, trans* & queer of color critique, and abolitionist studies. My dissertation argues that 20th and 21st century life narratives produced by black trans* women employ what I term critical trans* imagination in order to access what Audre Lorde describes as "erotic power and knowledge." Deploying imagination as a multisensory and interdisciplinary bridge between the spiritual and political realms, these life writers actively theorize and reimagine the relationship between structural transmisogynoir and and other possible organizations of life for trans and queer people of color. By attending to both the affinities and tensions within this understudied archive, this project upends the hegemonic narrative foundations rooted within institutionalized transgender studies and demonstrate how centering black, trans*-generated knowledge aids in crafting new pathways to actualizing radical social transformation.
Professional Experience
I'm the current Associate Editor of Book Reviews for TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. I'm also collaborating with other trans women of color creatives and writers on an anthology project tentatively titled Paradise on the Margins: Worldmaking by Trans Women of Color. For the call for submissions and other updates, visit our website here.
Publications
"Imagining Otherly: Performing Possible Black Trans Feminist Futures in Tangerine." TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 6.4 (November 2019): 481-490.
"The Arrival of Black Trans Mattering." Review of C. Riley Snorton's Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 25.4 (October 2019): 667-669.
