I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Electronic Media and Film at Towson University.  I received my PhD in American Studies from the University of Maryland College Park.  My research explores the impact of race and gender-based trauma on Black identity, media, and cultural production. A Baltimore native, videographer, and activist, I am also a member of Rooted, a Black LGBTQ healing collective. My most recent work includes The Periscopic Gaze, an experimental documentary exploring Black women’s ancestral survival strategies, which has been screened at several film festivals since its release in October 2024, and Damn Y’all Fine, a journey into Black queer aesthetics in Baltimore, which is in post-production. I am a 2022 Saul Zaents Innovation Fund Fellow as well as a 2023 Docs in Progress Legacy Fellow.  My manuscript, Mediated Misogynoir: The Erasure of Black Women’s and Girls’ Innocence the Public Imagination was released by Rowman and Littlefield’s Lexington Books in 2022.

My other publications include:  “Ignoring Women and Communities of Care:  Public Housing in HBO’s The Wire” in Cities in the Sky: Public Housing in Global Film and Media. Ed. Lorrie Palmer, New York: Bloomsbury. “In Between the Shade: Colorism and Its Impact on Black LGBTQ Communities” Colorism Then, Now, & Tomorrow: Redefining A Global Phenomenon, with Implications for Policy, Research, and Practice, Fielding University Press and “We Will Survive: Race and Gender-Based Trauma as Cultural Truth-Telling”. Feminist Perspectives on Orange Is the New Black: Thirteen Critical Essays. Eds. April Kouropoulos Householder and Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, NC: McFarland Publishers.