She received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 2013 and began to teach American and African American literature in the same year. Her research focuses on critical race theory, slavery, African American Diaspora, democratic discourses in the antebellum America, and performance. She currently works on a book, Performing Bodies and Performative Texts: The Bodily Culture of the Antebellum United States and Fleshy Writing. This project explores the reciprocal relations between black and white Americans as both performers and observers through abolitionist activism and its written texts in the antebellum United States. View Abstract | View Video