I direct the MA program in American Studies in the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University. I teach and advise student research there on a wide variety of topics. Previously, I taught at Louisiana State University, Gettysburg College, and the University of Oregon.
My book, The Black Romantic Revolution (Verso Books, 2020), tells how the African-American poets of the mid-nineteenth century conceived the end of slavery as a revolution, and how we still live with the consequences they prophesied.
I am currently at work on a project about the development of the popular culture of self-help in the context of the slavery and colonial settlement. Its working title is “The Violence of Self-Help.”
Along this way, I've written shorter pieces about Edgar Allan Poe, the blues, and the movie Moonlight, among other things.
From 2018-2023, I acted as co-chair of Columbia’s University Seminar in American Studies. I am also a member of the Bigger 6 Collective, a group of scholars whose aim is to challenge structural racism in and through the study of global Romanticisms.
I'm reachable via email.