Degrees
2018, BA Classics, minors French & English, summa cum laude, University of Pennsylvania
Bio
I study classics and American poetry. My dissertation considers how and why Black American poets from the Revolutionary Era to the Harlem Renaissance received the classics. Through case studies of four poets, Phillis Wheatley, George Moses Horton, Countee Cullen, and Melvin Beaunorus Tolson, I argue that, over time, Black writers naturalized the classics, encoded as a White discourse in earlier American traditions, as Black, thus demonstrating the spaces within classics that resonated with Black experiences and exposing the construction of classics as White.
My general interests are in poetry and poetics (American; 19th– and 20th– centuries French; and ancient Greek and Latin lyric) and classical receptions, especially Black classicisms.
Publications:
Scholarship:
- “Review of The Oxford Handbook of Emily Dickinson.” Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin 35.1 (2023), 19-20.
Poems et al.:
- “On Hudson River.” Bayou (forthcoming).
- “My Mother Says.” Rattle 83 (2024).
- “Flux.” BlazeVOX: Fall 2021, 412-18.
- “Lai-jee.” Indiana Review 43.1 (2021), 85-92.
Teaching Awards
- Doris Betts Award for Excellence in Teaching Composition, 2023
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