Degrees
2016, MA English, University of Missouri at Columbia
2014, BA English (French minor), Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge
Bio
I am a PhD candidate studying American literature of the long nineteenth century. In my dissertation project, “If you are always kind”: Animals and Becoming Human(e) in Nineteenth-Century American Children’s Literature, I am exploring the influence of children’s literary texts upon the development of humane education and animal welfare initiatives in the United States. I investigate how these texts were foundational in establishing definitions of the “humane” that are still very much present with us today.
In my future work, I am interested in exploring how we might connect the field of animal studies with modern veterinary science; I thus wish to connect theory with practice with respect to animal care. I am also more broadly interested in efforts to incorporate humane education within educational curriculums.
Publications:
- “‘Our School House is the Universe’: Henry David Thoreau as Radical Educator,” forthcoming in the new proposed Oxford Handbook of Henry David Thoreau (2024)
- “A Posthumous Life: Thoreau and the Possibilities of Posthuman Biography,” The Concord Saunterer: A Journal of Thoreau Studies, Vol. 27, 2019
- Review of Antoine Traisnel’s Capture: American Pursuits and the Making of a New Animal Condition (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) for Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology (Winter 2022, Vol. 30, No. 1)
- Review of Laura Dassow Walls’s Henry David Thoreau: A Life for the Emerson Society Papers (Fall 2018, vol. 29, no. 2)
- Online Review of LeAnne Howe’s Savage Conversations for The Carolina Quarterly (March 2019)
- Online Review of Caleb Johnson’s Treeborne: A Novel for The Carolina Quarterly (September 2018)
- Online Review of Filip Springer’s History of a Disappearance: The Story of a Forgotten Polish Town for The Carolina Quarterly (April 2018)
Teaching Awards
- Krista Turner Award for Excellence in Student Support for Spring 2022, UNC Dept. of English & Comparative Literature
- Student Undergraduate Teaching Award, UNC Chancellor’s Awards, 2022
Awards
- Andrew Oliver Research Fellowship, 2022-2023, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston MA
- Dissertation Research Fellowship, Summer 2022, UNC Dept. of English & Comparative Literature
- Robert Bain Award for Excellence Achieved by a Second-Year Student in Pre-1900 American Literature, 2018