Scholarship

Photograph of stuffed toy penguin wearing a conference nametag and sitting on top of a printed conference presentation script
In this photograph, a stuffed toy penguin is wearing a conference (CCCC) nametag, which reads Pengie. Pengie is sitting on top of a printed conference presentation script

I read, research, and write about disability studies, cultural rhetorics, digital writing, and feminist and queer methodologies. In my work, I attempt to center an intersectional approach, considering how race, sexuality, gender, and other identities and experiences intersect with disability. I am particularly interested in how rhetors who have been silenced or ignored remix, adapt, re-use, and invent rhetorical strategies that disrupt the status quo.

I am currently starting a new project on 19th century women’s abolitionist literacies in the U.S. The project, tentatively titled Am I Not a Sister?: U.S. Women’s Abolitionist Literacies in the 19th Century, identifies the challenges these 19th century Black and white women faced when communicating across difference and the strategies that emerged from these moments of collaboration and tension. My hope is that the project will offer a deeper understanding of what intersectional abolitionist literacies looked like in the 19th century, and potentially, how we can replicate and revise those literacies for modern feminist and abolition movements.

Journal Articles:

Book Chapters

  • “Rewriting Maternal Bodies on the Senate Floor: Tammy Duckworth’s Embodied Rhetoric.” Bodies of Knowledge: Embodied Rhetorics in Theory and Practice, edited by A. Abby Knoblauch & Marie E. Moeller. Utah State University Press, 2022.
  • “Braiding Stories, Taking Action: A Narrative of Graduate Worker-Led Change Work” with Allison Hutchison and Jacki Fiscus. Transformations: Change Work Across Writing Programs, Pedagogies, and Practices, edited by Holly Hassel and Kirst Cole. University of Colorado Press, 2021.
  • “Just (Shut Up and) Listen: A Black Feminist Rhetorical Tradition of Teaching Rhetorical Solidarity” in Feminist Circulations Rhetorical Explorations across History and Geography, edited by Jessica Enoch, Danielle Griffin, and Karen Nelson. Parlor Press, 2021.
  • Imagining Possibility through Difference: A Disability-as-Insight Approach to Multimodal Assessment” in Improving Outcomes: Disciplinary Writing, Local Assessment, and the Aim of Fairness, edited by Diane Kelly-Riley and Norbert Elliot. MLA Press, 2020.

Fellowships and Awards

  • NEH Summer Stipend, 2022.
  • ODU Summer Research Fellowship, 2022.
  • ODU English Department Hixon Fellowship, 2022.
  • CCCC Disability in College Composition Travel Award, 2020.
  • ODU Junior Faculty Mentorship Program, 2019-2020.
  • ODU College of Arts and Letters Summer Research Grant, 2019.
  • Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition’s Nan Johnson Outstanding Graduate Student Travel Award, 2017.
  • UMD Graduate School Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship, 2017.
 
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