I am a Visiting Assistant Professor of gender studies at The Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies at the University of Mississippi, where I also teach and mentor students in the new Lavender Living Learning Community. Outside of academia, I have six years' experience facilitating psychoeducational support groups (in-person and virtual) for survivors of domestic violence at the Compass Center for Women and Families in Chapel Hill, NC. From 2021 to 2022, I also proudly served as the Director of Programming and Outreach for Violet Valley Bookstore—a 501(c)3 non-profit based in Water Valley, MS—making feminist/LGBTQ+/multicultural books more accessible to our local community, the state of Mississippi, and the U.S. South more broadly.

My research revolves around mental health advocacy, exploring various ways in which activists and non-profit organizations use rhetoric as a means of healing extreme psychological distress and/or resisting mental health stigma. In my dissertation, I examined the rhetorical functions of "mad genius"—the longstanding cultural stereotype that mental illness is somehow connected to exceptional intelligence, creativity, wisdom, etc.—in women's autobiographical narratives of mental illness. Most recently, I published a book chapter on the rhetoric of support/support groups as it pertains to community services for survivors of domestic violence.