She received her Ph.D. in art history from the University of Iowa. Her research focuses on the antebellum period, including southern art, race and slavery, and Jacksonian-era portraiture. Her first book Selling Andrew Jackson: Ralph E. W. Earl and the Politics of Portraiture will be released June 2018 by the University of South Carolina Press. Her current book project, which she will be preparing as a Tyson Fellow is entitled Hidden in Plain Sight: Slavery and Suppression in Antebellum American Art.