Biography
I am a Ph.D. candidate in English and Comparative Literature and recipient of the Graduate Certificate from the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender. My research interests span queer/trans studies, twentieth/twenty-first-century American literature and culture, the novel, histories of sexuality, critical theory, aesthetics (particularly questions related to judgment and art’s autonomy), race and visual culture, photography, and archives. My writing is published or forthcoming in Post45, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, College Literature, and Esse arts + opinions.
My dissertation examines the expansive typologizing practices undertaken by queer and trans communities across the last century. Although “object-choice” models of sexuality achieved dominance by the middle of the twentieth century, gender-sexual typologies that contravene medical and state-sanctioned identities have proliferated in print media, digital cultures, bars, and personal ads alike. Across diverse literary and visual media, I chart the historical trajectory of individual types––bachelors, butches, clones, queens, and bears––tracing how they slide into obsolescence or dominance, accrete different political affects over time, and generate alternative forms of life.
My research has been supported by the Phil Zwickler Memorial Research Grant from Cornell University’s Human Sexuality Collection and the Sarah Pettit Doctoral Fellowship in Lesbian Studies from Yale University. In 2025, I was awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship at Yale’s Beinecke Library, where I conducted a long-term project on the vernacular taxonomies of 1960s and 1970s trans print cultures––including magazines, smut, newsletters, shopping catalogues, handbooks, therapeutic pamphlets, and photo collections.
At Columbia, I have been a Graduate Fellow at ISSG and currently serve as a Graduate Affiliate of the Columbia Research Initiative in the Global History of Sexualities. I was the recipient of the 2025-2026 Teaching Scholars Fellowship in English and Comparative Literature, through which I taught a seminar titled “Queer Politics and Literature in the Time of AIDS.” I was awarded a Kluge Fellowship for 2026-2027 and will serve as a graduate student mentor through the Columbia Undergraduate Scholars Program.
I received my B.A. in English and American Literature from New York University. Before graduate school, I taught middle and high school English in Brooklyn.
