My publications and general research program engage children’s and young adult literature, digital humanities, environmental humanities, and visual studies. My background in American literature, comics studies, and gender studies informs my analyses of the pedagogical and political potentials of the imagetext: a category of visual-verbal media first theorized by W. J. T. Mitchell that encompasses comics, picture books, zines, and other forms combining images and words in complex ecologies. I see imagetexts as transformative tools that can render complex, systemic issues—such as climate change and racial profiling—in accessible visual narratives. At the same time, I examine the biases and limitations of visual materials, which can reinscribe unequal power hierarchies and perpetuate the marginalization of minority groups through harmful representations or erasures.
Refereed Academic Publications
“Creating Space for Black Girl Power in Fred Crump, Jr.’s Transformative Fairy Tales.” Co-authored with Brandon Murakami. Black Spaces in International Children’s Literature, special issue of International Research in Children’s Literature, vol. 17, issue 1, forthcoming.
“Taking Bloody Revenge for the Environment: Dark Fang, Ecofeminist Horror, and the Eco-Vampire.” Gothic Nature: New Directions in Ecohorror and the EcoGothic, issue 4, forthcoming.
““But Who Listens When Kids Talk About Stuff Like Climate Change?”: Collaborative Making and Youth Activism in World War 3 Illustrated #46.” Alt Kid-Lit: What Children’s Literature Has Been, Never Was, and Might Be, edited by Kenneth B. Kidd and Derritt Mason, forthcoming.
“Representations of Youth Environmental Activism and Agency in Aika Tsubota’s Secrets of the Earth.” Creative Children and Children’s Culture, edited by Pete Kunze and Victoria Ford Smith, forthcoming.
““But Three Days Later, My Brother Came from the Woods”: (Un)Divine Horror in Emily Carroll’s Through the Woods.” Religion and Horror, edited by Brandon Grafius and John W. Morehead, Claremont Press, forthcoming.
“Representations of Environmental Disaster and Environmental Justice in Children’s Comics.” Comics In and of the Moment, special issue of The Comics Grid, 2022. https://www.comicsgrid.com/article/id/6552/.
“Mgambo, Sam, and the Tigers: Restorying Little Black Sambo Adaptations of the 1990s.” Co-authored with Brandon Murakami. Children’s Literature in Education, February 2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-022-09477-w.
“Reimagining Plastic Pollution and Climate Activism: Contradictions of Eco-Education in Rachel Hope Allison’s I’m Not a Plastic Bag.” Children’s Literature and Climate Change, special issue of The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 45, no. 2, 2021, pp. 172-191.
“Revolutionary Paratext and Critical Pedagogy in Nathan Hale’s One Dead Spy.” Comics and Education, special issue of Studies in Comics, vol. 11, no. 1, 2020, pp. 135–154.
Book Reviews
“Review of The Minamata Story: An EcoTragedy.” ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies, vol. 13, no. 1, 2021, https://imagetextjournal.com/review-of-the-minamata-story-an-eco-tragedy/.
“Review of Muslim Superheroes: Comics, Islam, and Representation,” ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies, vol. 11, no. 1, https://imagetextjournal.com/review-of-muslim-superheroes-comics-islam-and-representation/.
Public Scholarship
“A “Gentle Fantasy” of Ocean Conservation: Environmental Justice in Aquicorn Cove.” International Comics Arts Forum Virtual Conference Blog, 2020. http://www.internationalcomicartsforum.org/icaf-2020-virtual-conference-blog-posts/a-gentle-fantasy-of-ocean-conservation-environmental-justice-in-aquicorn-cove.
“How Can Paratexts Both Reinforce and Disrupt the Marginalization of Minority Voices?” Eds. Osvaldo Oyola and Leah Misemer, The Middle Spaces. https://themiddlespaces.com/2020/09/22/reading-comics-at-the-threshold-part-2/.