I’m a literary scholar with specialties in Early Modern Studies, Shakespeare Studies, Black Studies, and Mixed Race Studies.
My forthcoming book, Mixed Race Moors, explores how mixed race identity factors in Shakespeare’s plays.
I’m currently Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine
About Me
Research
My research focuses on early modern English literature and culture with an emphasis on Shakespeare. I often examine the early modern period from a Black studies perspective. I’m interested in the early modern past as well as how that past has bearing on subsequent history, including the present day. I’m also interested in how early modern studies is taught and have written about pedagogy.
My research has appeared in the journals Shakespeare Quarterly, New Literary History, and Pedagogy, among others. You can also find my work in edited collections like The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race.
Education
I did my graduate work at the University of Michigan, where I received my M.A. and Ph.D. in English Language and Literature. I also received a Graduate Certificate from Michigan’s Department of AfroAmerican and African Studies. After defending my dissertation, I completed postdocs in English at Michigan and at UCLA.
I received my B.A. from Rutgers University, where I majored in English and competed on the Track and Field Team as a hurdler and sprinter. I was a team captain and an Academic All-American. I held the school record in the 60 Meter Hurdles until 2023.
Academic Appointment
I’m Associate Professor of English at the University of California Irvine, as well as an affiliate faculty member with UCI’s Department of African American Studies and UCI’s Center for Early Cultures.
In addition to my work at UCI, I’m also a resident scholar with the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Teaching Shakespeare Institute.
Publications
“Emphasis and Elision: Early Modern English Approaches to Racial Mixing and their Afterlives,” New Literary History 52.3/4.
“Shakespeare and Mixed Race,” The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race, ed. Patricia Akhimie, Oxford University Press, 224-237.
“‘The Miseducation of Irie Jones’: Identity and Identification in the Shakespeare Classroom,” Early Modern Culture 14: 26-43.
“‘Envy Pale of Hue’: Whiteness and Division in ‘Fair Verona,’” White People in Shakespeare, ed. Arthur L. Little, Arden Bloomsbury, 91-104.
“Zora Neale Hurston and Humoral Theory: Comparing Racial Concepts from Early Modern England and Post-Abolition America,” Shakespeare Studies 46: 144-149.
“Why Front? The Importance of ‘Nonstandard’ English in the Shakespeare Classroom,” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 17.3: 533-540.
“Othello, Colin Powell, and Post-Racial Anachronisms,” Shakespeare Quarterly 67.1: 68-83.
Monograph
My forthcoming book is titled Mixed Race Moors: Shakespeare and Formulations of Blackness. It considers how Shakespeare engaged mixed race identity in his plays. It also examines how ways of thinking about mixed identity in Shakespeare’s England arise in the long history of British and U.S. approaches to the topic up to the present day. Mixed Race Moors will be published in early 2027 by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Other Places You Can Find My Work
I’m a contributor to the Throughlines project, an online resource developed at the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
Throughlines, “Racial Mixing in Titus Andronicus”
Throughlines, “Racial Divides in The Merchant of Venice”