Research Interests: Race and Representation; New Media; Artificial Intelligence; Black women/womanhood; Domestic Space and Domestic Labor; Service and Servitude; Haunting/Possession; AI Assistants

I am an Assistant Professor in Cinema and Media Studies at The University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. I received my Ph.D. from the Screen Cultures program at Northwestern University, with graduate certificates in African American Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies. In conjunction with my graduate research, I spent five years as an instructor for the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowships’ Summer Research Training Program at Bowdoin College. During my time as a Ph.D. candidate, I received two competitive internal fellowships from the Office of Fellowships and the Kaplan Humanities Institute, and two competitive external fellowships from the Institute for Citizens and Scholars and the Ford Foundation. In my time as an Assistant Professor, I have received three research and writing grants from the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities.

My current book project, Digital Maids in Domestic Spaces: Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Assistants, and the Ghosts of Black Women’s Labor, examines how artificially intelligent virtual assistants such as the Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa, and ChatGPT evoke and are haunted by Black female houseworkers in the United States. Demonstrating how these women haunt these devices, my monograph provides a historical account of human and nonhuman labor-performing devices and critical analyses of domestic service and domestic servants portrayed in 20th and 21st century U.S. media. Drawing methods and perspectives from Film and Media studies, Black studies, Critical Race Theory, Gender and Sexuality studies, Sound/Voice studies, and Science and Technology Studies, I argue that we must understand the charged labor histories embedded into contemporary digital technologies if we are to understand—and potentially change—the technologies themselves.

Outside of academia, I am a 4th Dan Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do and a certified scuba diver. I enjoy being in water, practicing my martial art, singing, dancing, reading, paddle boarding, and watching reality television.

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EDUCATION

Ph.D. in Screen Cultures, Northwestern University, 2023

M.A. in Screen Cultures, Northwestern University, 2018

B.A. in English Literature, Bowdoin College, 2015

RECENT GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS

  • Walter Chapin Simpson Center Grant: Research Cluster on Black Digital Studies in the Age of Technofascism, 2025-26

  • Simpson Center Grant: Faculty Writing Group: Book Projects Centering Transnational, Feminist, and Antiracist Approaches to Technology, Surveillance, and State Violence, 2025-26

  • Simpson Center Grant: Research Cluster on AI, Creativity, and the Humanities, 2024-25

  • Ford Dissertation Fellowship, 2022

  • MMUF Dissertation Grant, 2022

  • Graduate Assistantship with Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, Northwestern University, 2021-22

  • Graduate Assistantship with Northwestern University Office of Fellowships, 2020-21

  • Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (Awarded in 2013)