Writer, editor, teacher

I am a scholar of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American literature and culture. My first project explored the ties between abolitionism and the rise of ecological science and argued that abolitionists intervened into early debates about evolution to make the case that slavery rested on false notions of immutable biological race. I am now at work on a transatlantic cultural history of childbirth and midwifery. 

In addition to publishing scholarship, I write for a broad range of audiences on topics including American literature, women artists, and the history of medicine. My writing has appeared in The Nation, L.A. Review of Books, Lapham’s Quarterly, Boston Review, and elsewhere.

I have a PhD in English from Duke, and I teach writing at Princeton. I teach courses in first-year writing, the cultural representation of medicine, and public scholarship. I co-convene the Public Scholarship Initiative. I am also the book review editor at Resources for American Literary Study.