Research Areas

19th & 20th century literature; the novel; sexuality studies; social and cultural history

Biography

I am in my first year of the French PhD program. An early love affair with Marcel Proust brought me here, and the legacies of his novel and his world still preoccupy me. I argued that same-sex encounters are intimately (but not always comfortably) bound up with the Recherche's social and spiritual themes in my undergraduate thesis, titled "'I Do Not Speak French': Cruising, Magic, and Proust's Queer Sociability." I am currently exploring the literary history of social anxiety from the early modern period to the present.

I grew up in a trailer, earned my BA in French with a minor in English at Portland State University, and now live in San Francisco with my partner.