I am a doctoral candidate at Cornell University. I finished my BA from the University of North Dakota and my MA from Portland State University, with a second MA from Cornell. My work is in global/postcolonial literature and theory (most frequently in 20th and 21st century Irish literature and poetry), body and disability studies, fat studies, and literature’s role in the development of contemporary human rights discourse.

My dissertation is titled “Disorder, Digestion, and Metabolic Futures: Disabled Bellies in Contemporary Global Fiction.” Supported by readings of Han Kang, Carmen Maria Machado, and J.M. Coetzee, I argue that the ableist, colonialist acquisition and production of medical knowledge is challenged by embodied displays of disordered eating, disrupted digestion, and disabled bodies. Any liberatory future divorced from the violence inherent in the medical logics of containment, knowability, and diagnosis is, I suggest, thusly metabolically-determined.

To this effect, my work is often multi-disciplinary, exploring the transportability of literary scholarship to work in political theory, sociology, and the medical humanities. You can download a copy of my most recent CV here.

Outside of academia, I enjoy painting, knitting, interior design, horseback riding, singing, and spending time with my very opinionated and very fluffy cat.