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I’m a feminist media scholar currently serving as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Washington College. I’ve previously taught both Media and Gender Studies at West Chester University of Pennsylvania,The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Saint Louis University, and as a graduate student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

In addition to teaching courses in Communication, Media and Cinema Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies, I produce segments for The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies‘ Aca-Media podcast, serve on the steering committee of the SCMS Comedy and Humor Studies Scholarly Interest Group, perform stand-up comedy occasionally, created an inclusive open mic in Urbana, Illinois, and am in the process of co-launching an after school program called Girls Amplified, which was piloted in the fall of 2015.

My current book project explores identity, power, and labor, particularly through the lens of gender, in stand-up comedy as a media industry through several case studies including social media responses to Lindy West’s debate with Jim Norton about misogyny in comedy on FX’s Totally Biased with W Kamau Bell, the critical reception of television shows about women stand-up comics like Oxygen’s Funny Girls, and interviews with comics with marginalized gender identities and expressions in Champaign and Chicago.  Other ongoing projects include theorizing the political aesthetic of humor on TikTok, television fandom on Twitter, including case studies on Comedy Central’s @midnight and Freeform’s Switched at Birth, stand-up comedy and Netflix, and comedy podcasting.

I received my B.A. in English from Indiana University and my M.A. in Television, Radio, and Film from Syracuse University, and my PhD from the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.  Before returning to school, I worked for the New York Television Festival and for VOX, a voice-over talent agency in Los Angeles.