Areas of Specialisation: Feminist/gender/queer theory, American literature, critical race theory, performance studies, film studies, aesthetics/ethics

My dissertation, Posing Alternatives: Bodily Comportment and the Feminist Imagination, which is funded by a SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship-Doctoral award, investigates the role of gesture, posture, and pose in late 20th-century U.S. literature and culture, pushing beyond ideas of the body as a readable surface or sign and toward the relational, performative, and subversive potential of its comportment. Drawing on interdisciplinary methods from performance studies, film studies, art history, and political theory, I consider bodily comportment as a crucial site where feminists theorise sociopolitical transformation, as well as a space where questions of interpretation, visuality, and opacity push against conventional methods and ethics of reading. Each chapter pairs a literary text with a visual object, with projected chapters investigating works by Alice Munro, Ana Mendieta, Assata Shakur, Lorna Simpson, Marilynne Robinson, Martha Rosler, and Toni Morrison.

I also continue to research and publish on 20th-century American literature and contemporary film, with intended projects on topics ranging from Charlotte Wells’ film Aftersun to Edith Wharton’s novel Summer. Current and selected academic publications are linked below.