Her research looks at what she calls “indirect aesthetics,” or the ways in which lyric figures of speech facilitate ethico-political response across American popular and literary culture. In addition to her work with the public humanities, she has published articles on early and contemporary American literature and rhetorical theory in Callaloo and GLQ; her edited collection Against Life comes out with Northwestern University Press in Fall 2015. She received her M.St. in Women's Studies from Oxford University in 2002 and her PhD in Literary Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2014.