She received her BA at BYU, where she majored in Spanish and minored in Portuguese. She then completed her MA in Spanish Peninsular Literature at BYU, after which she received her PhD in Hispanic Literature with a Portuguese minor at Vanderbilt University. Her research interests include early modern Iberian convent theater, performance criticism, feminist theory, and spatial theory. She utilizes spatial theory to explore how the space of the convent allowed for religious women to resist the traditional gender norms of the day. She has taught poetry, prose, and drama by Spanish women writers and plans on developing a course on Portuguese women writers in the near future. Additionally, she is interested utilizing performance as a pedagogical tool meant to help students gain new insight into dramatic texts, especially those written by women.