Biography
I earned my Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I specialized in political theory, international relations, and U.S. women’s history. I taught at Penn State University in Political Science for 4 years before moving to Atlanta to teach in Emory University’s Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. I have previously taught for Georgia State’s Department of Political Science, Georgia State’s Institute for Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Davidson College, and Sewanee: The University of the South. For 2019-2020 I am a Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta.
My research examines how gender, sexuality, race, and class formations impact democratic participation and especially political protest. Methodologically, I combine discourse analysis and framing theory with empirical studies of political activism in the U.S. from 1945 to the present.
My first book, Dissident Citizenship: Gender and the Politics of Democratic Disturbance (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), analyzes the complex influence of gender and race on practices of democratic dissent within the U.S. civil rights and welfare rights movements.
My current book project, Enraged: Race, Gender, and the Democratic Politics of Anger, investigates the democratic and political challenges posed by anger in the contemporary public sphere, and includes case studies on the gendered and racialized politics of anger in the Tea Party, the U.S. gun control debate, the reproductive “War on Women,” and the Trump Presidency.
Research and Teaching Interests:
- American Government; U.S. Public Policy, Race, and Gender; Gender and Politics
- Constitutional Law; Civil Liberties; Gender and the Law
- U.S. Political and Social Movements Since 1945
- Right-Wing Studies; Citizenship Studies; Poverty Studies
- American Political Thought; Democratic Theory; History of Political Thought
- Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Feminist Political Theory
- Emotions, Affect, and Politics
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