Research
My primary research areas include late nineteenth and twentieth century American literature, feminist disability theory, performance and the body. I am particularly interested in the relays between the late 19th century and the contemporary moment, and investigate these relationships through interdisciplinary methodologies, drawing on cultural studies, feminist theory, queer theory, disability theory, and performance studies. Although my background and training is in English literature, I study a wide range of materials, including fiction, drama, performance art, and other media to explore the intersections of gender, sexuality, ability and other theories of embodiment. I am also a performing artist and bring my knowledge of the literary canon to bear on the artistic products I create and perform.
My current research project, which evolves from my dissertation, critiques the co-option of freakishness as an identity and aesthetic practice within the dominant systems of white heteropatriarchal capital. I present work from my dissertation project, Freaks in Public: Reading the Freakish in Contemporary American Literature and Culture, at the PCA/ACA National Conference, the MLA National Conference, Sensualising Deformity at the University of Edinburgh, and the Circus and Its Others II conference in Prague. I recently published an article-length version of a chapter from my dissertation in the European Journal of American Cultural Studies, titled “American Horror Story: Capital, Counterculture and the Freak,” and curated the American Horror Story theme week on In Media Res, an online media commons project for public scholarship. I intend to continue this line of inquiry across a wider array of texts and performance practices in a scholarly book. Tentatively titled Damn Everything but the Circus, this project examines the use of circus aesthetics in contemporary popular literature and culture from the late 20th and 21st century. Circus aesthetics, broadly, refers to settings, characters, and visual signifiers that relate to the traditional American circuses and sideshows of the late 19th and early 20th century, and which generally confer a wide array of variously of raced, gendered, and abled bodies united under the inclusive nature of the circus tent. Questions that drive this project are: Why do we remain so fascinated by the circus, even as traditional American circuses have disappeared with the 2018 closure of Ringling Bros? Who makes use of circus aesthetics and for what end? How does the use of circus aesthetics make visible class, race, gender, ability and other power dynamics? How does it complicate them? How does it erase them?
Over the following set of chapters, I aim to show that circus aesthetics primarily employ the rhetorical function of multiculturalism, diversity, equity, and inclusion, while simultaneously re-centering white heteropatriarchal capital as a privileged form. Chapter one will provide a historical overview of circus and sideshow history in America, building on scholarship by historian Janet Davis, performance scholar Robert Bogdan, and literary critic Rachel Adams. Chapter two will trace the aesthetic legacy of circuses in cinema, from Tod Browning’s Freaks to Tim Burton, and argue that cinema centers the circus as a space through which to visually imagine diversity through a white masculine lens. My third chapter will examine circus narratives in contemporary popular literature such as Sarah Hall’s The Electric Michelangelo, Sarah Gruen’s Water for Elephants, and others, to articulate how white women imagine the circus as a feminist space, while still recapitulating the very heteropatriarchal capitalist structures their heroines seek to escape. Chapter four will take an historical turn toward P.T. Barnum’s writings to establish the showman archetype as white capitalist totem. This chapter also examines the myth of the exceptional individual crystalized through Barnum’s self-production that feeds into circus aesthetics and circus narratives discussed in chapters two and three. Chapter five builds on this discussion and turns toward modern sideshows and American Horror Story: Freak Show to argue that the centrality of the showman to contemporary circus and sideshow narratives and practices contradicts the aesthetic imagining of the circus as a space of pluralist diversity. The final chapter takes up Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love and examines the novel’s turn away from the circus as a feminist revision of the heteropatriarchal and capitalist modalities of circus aesthetics, while still upholding whiteness as central in its disabled feminist worldview. Ultimately, the project critiques the ideologies of inclusiveness within circus aesthetics and aims to expose how such aesthetics reproduce white heteropatriarchal capital as a dominant mode, to the exclusion of people of color, women, LGBTQ identities, and persons with disabilities.
My current research project, which evolves from my dissertation, critiques the co-option of freakishness as an identity and aesthetic practice within the dominant systems of white heteropatriarchal capital. I present work from my dissertation project, Freaks in Public: Reading the Freakish in Contemporary American Literature and Culture, at the PCA/ACA National Conference, the MLA National Conference, Sensualising Deformity at the University of Edinburgh, and the Circus and Its Others II conference in Prague. I recently published an article-length version of a chapter from my dissertation in the European Journal of American Cultural Studies, titled “American Horror Story: Capital, Counterculture and the Freak,” and curated the American Horror Story theme week on In Media Res, an online media commons project for public scholarship. I intend to continue this line of inquiry across a wider array of texts and performance practices in a scholarly book. Tentatively titled Damn Everything but the Circus, this project examines the use of circus aesthetics in contemporary popular literature and culture from the late 20th and 21st century. Circus aesthetics, broadly, refers to settings, characters, and visual signifiers that relate to the traditional American circuses and sideshows of the late 19th and early 20th century, and which generally confer a wide array of variously of raced, gendered, and abled bodies united under the inclusive nature of the circus tent. Questions that drive this project are: Why do we remain so fascinated by the circus, even as traditional American circuses have disappeared with the 2018 closure of Ringling Bros? Who makes use of circus aesthetics and for what end? How does the use of circus aesthetics make visible class, race, gender, ability and other power dynamics? How does it complicate them? How does it erase them?
Over the following set of chapters, I aim to show that circus aesthetics primarily employ the rhetorical function of multiculturalism, diversity, equity, and inclusion, while simultaneously re-centering white heteropatriarchal capital as a privileged form. Chapter one will provide a historical overview of circus and sideshow history in America, building on scholarship by historian Janet Davis, performance scholar Robert Bogdan, and literary critic Rachel Adams. Chapter two will trace the aesthetic legacy of circuses in cinema, from Tod Browning’s Freaks to Tim Burton, and argue that cinema centers the circus as a space through which to visually imagine diversity through a white masculine lens. My third chapter will examine circus narratives in contemporary popular literature such as Sarah Hall’s The Electric Michelangelo, Sarah Gruen’s Water for Elephants, and others, to articulate how white women imagine the circus as a feminist space, while still recapitulating the very heteropatriarchal capitalist structures their heroines seek to escape. Chapter four will take an historical turn toward P.T. Barnum’s writings to establish the showman archetype as white capitalist totem. This chapter also examines the myth of the exceptional individual crystalized through Barnum’s self-production that feeds into circus aesthetics and circus narratives discussed in chapters two and three. Chapter five builds on this discussion and turns toward modern sideshows and American Horror Story: Freak Show to argue that the centrality of the showman to contemporary circus and sideshow narratives and practices contradicts the aesthetic imagining of the circus as a space of pluralist diversity. The final chapter takes up Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love and examines the novel’s turn away from the circus as a feminist revision of the heteropatriarchal and capitalist modalities of circus aesthetics, while still upholding whiteness as central in its disabled feminist worldview. Ultimately, the project critiques the ideologies of inclusiveness within circus aesthetics and aims to expose how such aesthetics reproduce white heteropatriarchal capital as a dominant mode, to the exclusion of people of color, women, LGBTQ identities, and persons with disabilities.
Dissertation
Freaks in Public: Reading the Freakish in Contemporary American Literature and Culture
My dissertation project investigates the freak as a figure of critical potential for both reclamation and appropriation through feminist, queer, and disability studies lenses. It tracks the shifting relationships between “freaks” and U.S. national culture, illustrating how the freak serves as a powerful figure that disrupts binary logics and expands the knowable limits of public life in texts such as Half-Life, Hedwig & the Angry Inch, Geek Love, The Elephant Man, Sealboy-Freak, and American Horror Story: Freak Show. I argue for "freak" as a heuristic through which historically marginalized populations engage with and transform these seemingly antiquated modes of representation in order to problematize and critique their own representational history. Though my work delights in the pleasures of freakishness, it also recognizes that the power of the freak is double-edged, proving that the resurgence of freak shows in the postmodern cultural landscape has also enabled the appropriation of freakishness by “norms” through the same powerful logics of exceptional individualism and diverse pluralism that configure the freak show as a “freaktopia.”
With its focus on contemporary fiction, drama, and performance, my work examines the artistic legacy of freaks and freak shows and thinks through their relevance to the here and now, expanding the periodicity and critical engagements of "freak studies." Rather than locating the freak and the freak show as static objects of history, I investigate the possibilities for the reclamation of the freak -- and its limits as an identity position amid the dual forces of neoliberalism and late capitalism.
With its focus on contemporary fiction, drama, and performance, my work examines the artistic legacy of freaks and freak shows and thinks through their relevance to the here and now, expanding the periodicity and critical engagements of "freak studies." Rather than locating the freak and the freak show as static objects of history, I investigate the possibilities for the reclamation of the freak -- and its limits as an identity position amid the dual forces of neoliberalism and late capitalism.
Research Interests
Late 20th century American literature, Late 19th century American literature, dramatic literature, theories and practices of enfreakment, feminist theory, queer theory, disability studies, performance studies
