About
Currently an Assistant Professor of English at Tougaloo College. My current project focuses on the influence of African American culture in transnational multi-ethnic blues literature. My research and teaching interests include Anglo-North American literatures of the 20th century, African American literature, US Southern literature, and film studies.
Education
2019 Doctor of Philosophy in Literature (University of Mississippi)
Dissertation: “Rambling Blues: Mapping North American Blues Literature Since 1970”
Committee: Adam Gussow (Director) Jay Watson, Leigh Anne Duck, Derrick Harriell, and Tony Bolden (Kansas)
2012 Master of Arts in English (University of Saskatchewan)
2011 Bachelor of Arts in English (University of Saskatchewan)
Publications
Peer Reviewed Journals
“The Africadian Blues: A Conversation with George Elliott Clarke” The Global South. (Forthcoming 2020).
“‘Traded it off for that Voodoo thing:’ Cultural Capital and Vernacular Debt in Disney’s Representation of New Orleans.” Journal of Popular Culture 49.6 (Dec. 2016): 1224-40.
Chapters in Edited Collections
“That Swampy Sound: The Politics of Identity in Swamp Music” Swamp Souths: Literary and Cultural Ecologies. Eds. Eric Gary Anderson, Taylor Hagood, Kirstin Squint, and Anthony Wilson. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, Forthcoming Spring 2020)
Jay Watson, Robert J. Briggs, Josh-Wade Ferguson, and Andrew Thomas, “The Cormac McCarthy Journals: The Single-Author Graduate Course.” Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy. Eds. Stacey Peebles and Benjamin West. (New York: MLA, Forthcoming).
Interviews in Literary Journals
“Perpetual Reckoning: An Interview with Kiese Laymon.” New Ohio Review. 16 April 2019.
Projects
I’m currently working on a book-length project about the influence of African American Culture on multi-ethnic blues literature. Upcoming Talks and Conferences
“Blues, Theft, and Precarity: Deconstructing the Wake of Pernicious Whiteness in Hari Kunzru’s White Tears.” The Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS) Annual Conference (New Orleans). April 2020.
Memberships
Modern Language Association (MLA)
The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)
Society for the Study of Southern Literature (SSSL)
Golden Key International Honors Society
