I am a PhD candidate at Indiana University, Bloomington, studying literature and the environmental humanities, and a dedicated teacher with ten years of instructional experience. I write about the relation between colonialism and climate change, the way the climate crisis disrupts conceptions of place and time, and the role of literature in pursuing environmental justice. As a teacher, I design courses that similarly ask students to consider the role of writing and literature in making sense of our world, and that prepare students to develop informed perspectives and participate meaningfully in public discourse. Ultimately, my research and teaching are motivated by the belief that the humanities play a vital role in shaping a just and sustainable future. 

My goal as a teacher is to instill practices of critical thought, engaged discourse, self-reflection, and an ethical pursuit of knowledge that will empower students to successfully navigate the world beyond our classroom. My pedagogy draws on ten years of diverse teaching experience: I have taught high school English in rural Nebraska; English as a Foreign Language in Japan; first-year composition at Angelo State University in west Texas; and courses in literature, professional writing, and first-year composition at IU. Take a look at my course design and teaching experience here.

My past pedagogy research has focused broadly on accessibility and student agency, including topics such as high-impact practices, anti-racist writing assessment, self-regulated learning, and classroom accessibility. My research currently focuses on AI literacies and on teaching in the environmental humanities: I am writing a chapter on teaching critical AI literacies in the literature classroom for an edited collection titled Teaching Authentic Thinking in the Age of AI, and I recently collaborated with colleagues in IU's rhetoric and composition department to co-edit a special issue on sustainability literacies for Community Literacy Journal. Read more about my current pedagogy research here.

My research in the environmental humanities is inherently interdisciplinary. I blend ecocritical and decolonial approaches to study contemporary literature, exploring how possibilities for planetary repair emerge in these convergences. I am attentive to the ways the climate crisis is rooted in and maintained by colonial and racist political structures, and my research seeks to formulate the role of the literary imagination in pursuing environmental justice. 

My dissertation, “Changing Time(s): Ecopoetry for a Climate-Changed Future,” stems from a curiosity about how literature can help us navigate the uncertain landscapes and timescales of the climate crisis. I posit that linear time is an inadequate framework for envisioning a future through and beyond the climate crisis, and I study contemporary poetry to illuminate alternative ways of imagining futurity. My chapters present three modes of nonlinear ecopoetics that, I argue, help us imagine futures in which justice for both people and planet is possible. Read more about my dissertation and other current research here.

My dissertation and other research projects have received fellowship support from IU through the College of Arts and Sciences Dissertation Fellowship, the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, and the HASTAC Scholar Award for Digital Humanities. My research is forthcoming in ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, and Postcolonial Indigenous Ecocriticism and Environmental Protest (Routledge Environmental Humanities Series). Read more about my past and forthcoming publications here.