Welcome! I am a teacher, a scholar of Comparative Literature and Childhood Studies, and a Mellon Engaged Scholar Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. My work interrogates the many ways in which children in a range of 20th and 21st-century historical and cultural contexts are made to bear the burden of resolving adult anxieties over survival and vulnerability by being forced to embody an idealized and unrealistic form of superhuman resilience in the midst of trauma. I strive to bring to light narratives by and about child victim/survivors that both evidence the real damage caused by this burden and suggest alternative modes of survival that honor vulnerability and interdependence over individualistic triumph.
I focus on contemporary literature that is about children and childhood–much of which is also written for children and young adults. I specialize in multiethnic U.S. literature and cultural production, queer- and female-authored Latin American literature and cultural production, and postwar Dutch Jewish literature and cultural production. My work is interdisciplinary, drawing from childhood studies, disability studies, queer theory, critical race studies, and ethical philosophy. As a teacher-scholar, I am devoted to inclusive and dialogic pedagogies, translation, and public humanities. I am passionately committed to increasing educational equity in the U.S.
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