His teaching and research focuses on film theory, black visual and expressive culture, historiography, global cinema, film adaptation, and genre theory. His recent publications include “Reckless Eyeballing: Coonskin, Film Blackness, and the Racial Grotesque” in Black American Cinema Reconsidered (Routledge, 2012); “Dirty Pretty Things: The Racial Grotesque and Contemporary Art” in Post-Soul Satire: Black Identity after Civil Rights (University Press of Mississippi, 2014); and “Smiling Faces: Chameleon Street, Racial Performativity, and Film Blackness” in Passing Interest: Racial Passing in U.S. Fiction, Memoir, Television, and Film, 1990-2010 (SUNY Press, 2014). He is completing a book entitled Film Blackness: American Cinema and the Idea of Black Film and co-editing two volumes, Black Cinema Aesthetics Revisited and New Chester Himes Criticism.