I am an early career scholar of nineteenth and early twentieth century American literature, with interests in multi-ethnic and African American literature and history of the Left. My first monograph, currently under review, comparatively reads regionalist and utopian fiction of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, focusing on the ways literary forms engage contemporaneous social movements. The book argues that the literary utopia gives form to the Progressive imagination, with its investment in a racially exclusive, bounded nation, while literary regionalism imagines more radically democratic forms of social change. An excerpt is published as "The Black Utopia: Secret Societies and Time Travel in W. E. B. Du Bois and Sutton E. Griggs" (MELUS 2022). At SLU, this work informs my teaching of American Literature before and after 1865, Ethnic American Literature, introductions to literary studies and the English major, and special topics courses such as "Spies and Secret Societies in American Literature, 1886 to 1929" and "Sex, Scandal, and St. Louis: The Literary Career and Critical Legacy of Kate Chopin." In addition to these courses, I regularly teach my department's creative nonfiction workshop and contribute to the writing program at multiple levels. In teaching, as in scholarly and creative work, I am interested in place, community formation, and social change.