She teaches graduate seminars on Native American history, U.S. women of color history, and the history of gender and U.S. empire, as well as lower division undergraduate courses on U.S. women’s history and sports and ethnic America. Her book manuscript, Colonial Intimacies: Interethnic Kinship, Sexuality, and Marriage in Southern California, 1769-1885, is under contract with the University of Oklahoma Press. A native of Cerritos, California, she became interested in studying mixed marriages, biculturality, and Catholic godparentage after twice becoming a godmother and witnessing her biracial friends and family members struggle with their identities and feeling that their family stories were often left out of history books and community studies.