Biography
I am a literary scholar specializing in ecocriticism and American literature, with an emphasis on interconnections among the U.S. West, settler colonialism, and the environment. I explore these ideas with students in a range of genres—including novels, short fiction, essays, lyric poetry, and film—with an eye to the many different ways the U.S. has been rendered as a place and an environment in literature.
I am strongly committed to both syllabus diversification and thoughtful engagement with the American literary canon, structuring courses so that students think critically about why we read what we read: I teach indigenous perspectives on the U.S. National Park System alongside John Muir’s nature writing, invite students to read Herman Melville, Willa Cather, and Zora Neale Hurston with an ecocritical lens, and foreground queerly ecological voices.
My article “Temporary Presences on the Mesa: ‘Tom Outland’s Story’ and Mesa Verde National Park” was published in the Summer 2025 issue of Western American Literature. This article explores some of the ideas that are central to my book project, Coming and Going to Know a Place: Transience in Literature of the U.S. West, which focuses on temporary place relationships in western literature. By looking at literary representations of lands in and nearby NPS sites, I argue that movement and impermanence invite unique forms of environmental attention.
I am an avid traveler, runner, and coffee drinker; my perfect day would include all three.
