My research is motivated by a critical interest in ecological objects and aesthetics, and the history of their relationship to race in Anglophone literature. I am specifically interested in how eco-racial tropes are variously taken up by enslaved and colonized subjects from the long 19th century onward. My in-progress dissertation studies the place of four commodities (salt, indigo, botanicals, and lumber) in the naturalization of the British empire immediately pre- and post-abolition (roughly 1825-1865).
This work is mutually enriched by my position as web editor with Chicago Review, participating in concert/freelance dance, and of course by my love for Chicago history, it being my hometown. I am additionally a Neubauer Family Fellow and Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship PhD Fellow.