In 2012 she published Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the Nineteenth Century which won the 2013 Lora Romero award for best first book from the American Studies Association as well as the best book award from the Association for the Study of Food and Society. Her scholarly writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters, Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, Women and Performance, American Quarterly, J19: The Journal of Nineteenth Century Americanists, Lateral: The Journal of the Cultural Studies Association, The Journal of Food, Culture and Society as well as Social Text, Lateral and ASAP/Journal.