I’m an assistant professor of English and Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies at Texas Christian University, where I teach twentieth- and twenty-first-century American literature, critical race and ethnic studies, and American cultural studies. My articles have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as American Literature, American Quarterly, Contemporary Literature, Critical Inquiry, and Modern Fiction Studies. I have also contributed essays and op-eds to the Austin American-Statesman, the Dallas Morning News, and the Los Angeles Reviews of Books.

I’m currently working on two book projects. My first project, Empire of Defense: Race and the Cultural Politics of Permanent War, traces a cultural history of national defense and race from the formation of the Department of Defense in the late 1940s to the long wars of the twenty-first century. Empire of Defense is under contract with the University of Chicago Press. My second project, Whiteness on the Edge of Town: Veteran America and White Racial Politics since Vietnam, identifies the Vietnam vet as the protagonist of a new white racial politics who emerged as a rare site of consensus between conservatives and liberals in the post–civil rights era.

At TCU, I’m a core member of the Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies Program and an affiliate member of the Women and Gender Studies Program. My research has been supported by a Mellon Sawyer Seminar Fellowship from the University of California, Irvine, a First Book Institute Fellowship from Pennsylvania State University, and an OpEd Project Fellowship from the University of California, Merced. I completed my PhD in 2015 at the University of Connecticut.