Education
- PhD, University of Illinois, 2013
Research Areas
- United States History
- Gender and Women’s History
- History of Race
About
Research Interests
- Gender
- Urban History
- U.S. History
- Transnationalism
Current Projects
Past Projects
- Exploring black-white intimacies in antebellum America
- Tuscaloosa, The Nineteenth Century City
- Druid City: A Music Video
Courses Taught
- American Civilization to 1865 (HY 103)
- American Civilization since 1865 (HY 104)
- The Nineteenth Century City (HY 300)
- American Swagger (HY 306)
- Antebellum America (HY 311/AAST 395)
Awards and Honors
- 2021 – Newberry Fellow
- 2020 – PEN Jean Stein Grant for Literary Oral History for “Baa Haas” research
- 2016 Barbara “Penny” Kanner Prize, Western Association of Women Historians (WAWH) for Remember Me to Miss Louisa: Hidden Black-White Intimacies in Antebellum America (Northern Illinois University Press, 2015)
- Alternate, Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (2014)
- Co-honoree, Educator of the Year, Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society (2014)
- Bankhead/Summersell Pre-Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, Department of History, University of Alabama (2012-13)
- Alternate, Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship (2012)
- Outstanding Research Writing Award, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Summer Pre-Doctoral Institute (SPI) (2010)
- “The River is Low: Fancy Girls and the Issue of Desire Around One Domestic Slave Trader,” Honorable Mention, Graduate Category, Ruth Murray Essay Competition, Center for Gender Studies, University of Chicago (2007)
Other Professional Interests
Selected Publications
- Teaching Public History Creatively in Alabama: About (Public) Face (Routledge, forthcoming).
- The Chase and Ruins: Zora Neale Hurston in Honduras (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023).
- “When I First Wore Fish Leather, Or Black Girl in Iceland,” Pan African Spaces: Essays on Black Transnationalism, Msia K. Clark, Phiwokuhle W. Mnyandu, and Loy Azalia, eds. (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).
- “Tracing Black Racial and Spatial Politics in South Florida via Memory,” Journal of Urban History (First published date: January-30-2017 ): 1-21. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0096144216688467.
- Remember Me to Miss Louisa: Hidden Black – White Intimacies in Antebellum America (Northern Illinois University Press, June 2015).
- “Mr Ballard, I am compelled to write again”: Beyond Bedrooms and Brothels, a Fancy Girl Speaks,” Black Women, Gender and Families, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring 2011): 17-40.