Degrees
2018, BA Classics, minors French & English, summa cum laude, University of Pennsylvania
Bio
I study nineteenth- and twentieth-century American poetry and poetics, working at the intersection of the erotic and the philosophical. My dissertation (tentatively) examines lyrical representations of sex and desire as political allegory. I am particularly interested in considering the implications of possession, submission, and orgasm—in theme and as mimesis—for figuring the democratic subject.
I am currently at work on an essay investigating erotic apostrophe in Whitman’s poem “The Sleepers” in light of dominant-submissive power dynamics.
I am also currently at work on an essay considering the leveling of speaker-addressee hierarchies in Dickinson’s tropings on orgasm (in contribution to a long and rich feminist critical tradition).
And lastly, I have an article on retainer that makes a case for Du Bois as Emerson’s poet by attending to the moral-philosophical grounds of Emerson’s essay “The Poet.”
Publications:
Critical:
“Review of The Oxford Handbook of Emily Dickinson.” Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin 35.1 (2023), 19-20.
Creative:
“My Mother Says.” Rattle 83 (2024).
“Flux.” BlazeVOX: Fall 2021, 412-8.
“Lai-jee.” Indiana Review 43.1 (2021), 85-92.
Awards
External:
- Graduate Student Conference Paper Award, Ralph Waldo Emerson Society, 2023
- Dickinson Critical Institute Grant, Emily Dickinson International Society, 2022
Internal:
- Bain Award (Excellence in Pre-1900 American Lit.), UNC-CH DOECL, 2023
- Travel Grant, UNC-CH DOECL, 2023
- Transportation Grant, UNC-CH Graduate School, 2022
- Travel Award, UNC-CH Graduate & Professional Student Government, 2022
- Booker Fellowship, UNC-CH DOECL, 2021
- Inclusive Excellence Top-Up, UNC-CH Graduate School, 2021