I’m a performance studies scholar and theatre historian.
I study the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in U.S. popular performance.
I’m an associate professor of Theatre History at the University of Virginia, where I teach performance theory, theatre historiography, queer performance, and the history of stand-up comedy.
My first book, Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Century United States (University of Iowa Press 2021) archives and analyzes Black feminist stand-up comedy in the United States over the past sixty years. Looking closely at the work of Jackie “Moms” Mabley, Mo’Nique, Wanda Sykes, Sasheer Zamata, Sam Jay, Amanda Seales, and Michelle Buteau, this book shows how Black feminist comedy and the laughter it ignites are vital components of Black feminist, queer, and anti-racist protest.
I’m now working on my next book, Sonic Intimacies: Listening to Queer Archives.
