About Me

I live in sunny Southern California where I’m an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Writing Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Before that, I was an Assistant Professor at Methodist University. My research interests center on cultural and feminist rhetorics with specific attention to gender, sexuality, reproductive justice, and religious trauma. My co-edited collection (with Dr. Mari Ramler), Bodies and Beliefs: Purity Culture and the Rhetoric of Religious Trauma, will be coming out with Pennsylvania State University Press in summer 2025. This book focuses on embodied experiences of religious trauma and the many paths available for healing.

I earned my PhD in the Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design (RCID) program at Clemson University in 2021. My dissertation, Altared Bodies: Evangelical Purity Rhetorics in the Age of Sexual Politics, won the Victor J. Vitanza Outstanding RCID Dissertation award in April 2022 and was one of three finalists for the Religious Communication Association’s Top Dissertation award in 2022.

I have recent scholarship in Constellations; Theology and Sexuality; Intraspection: A Journal of Rhetoric, Culture and Style; Canopy Forum; as well as several edited collections. I am currently working on a book project focusing on the rhetorics of Purity Culture. In addition to my monograph, I recently received a grant to conduct archival research that will support my on-going work on reproductive justice. My research and teaching continue to evolve from my investments in building just, equitable, and communal frameworks for embodied life. When I’m not teaching or writing, I’m outside on a trail running or hiking.