Outside my academic work, I have over a decade of varied professional writing and nonprofit experience. I have written successful grant applications, published blog posts, feature stories, news stories, music reviews, magazine articles, encyclopedia entries, academic theses, poetry and short stories. I am passionate about the role of arts and culture in creating a more socially just and liberated society, and have worked in social and racial justice advocacy efforts with the community-based music archive Detroit Sound Conservancy, the labor union United Campus Workers Virginia where I serve as chair of the Welcoming Committee, in the classroom through teaching courses including the History of Whiteness and Intro to African and African American Studies, and as a volunteer docent at a historic Black church that was converted into a local African American history museum in Oxford, MS.
In addition to writing, teaching, and research, I have training in project management, web design, oral history, and event planning and implementation.
I have done grants administration, membership coordination, and editorial work with nonprofits including:
Positions Held
- Grant Writing Intern, Detroit Sound Conservancy, 2022-2023
- Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Virginia, 2020-2021
- Editorial Assistant, Encyclopedia Virginia, 2020
- Graduate Student Assistant, University of Mississippi, 2016-2018
- Editorial Assistant, Living Blues Magazine, 2017
- Freelance Writer, No Country for New Nashville, 2014-2016
- Features Writer, The Cheat Sheet, 2013-2015
Service & Volunteer Work
- Volunteer, Prison Library Support Network, 2023-present
- Chair, Welcoming Committee, United Campus Workers, 2020-present
- Volunteer, Web Scraping, Saving Ukranian Cultural Heritage Online, 2022
- Volunteer Docent, Burns Belfry Museum & Multicultural Center, 2016-2019
Personal Grants & Awards
- Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Fellowship, 2022-present
- Elected to UVa's prestigious honor society The Raven Society, 2022
- Praxis Program Fellow, University of Virginia Scholar's Lab, 2021-2022
- Bordin-Gillette Researcher Travel Fellowship, for travel to the University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library, 2022
- Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Summer Research Grant, University of Virginia, 2021
- Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Council Research Grant, University of Virginia, 2021
- Virginia Humanities South Atlantic Studies Fellow, 2020
- Lucille and Motee Daniels Prize for Best Thesis, Center for the Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippi, 2018
- Graduate Writing Fellowship, Department of Writing and Rhetoric, University of Mississippi, 2017-2018
- Lucille and Motee Daniels Prize for Best First-Year Paper, Center for the Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippi, 2017
- Southern Foodways Alliance Oral History Fellowship, 2017
- Hopwood Award in Undergraduate Creative Nonfiction, University of Michigan, 2013
- Hopwood Award in Undergraduate Fiction, University of Michigan, 2012
- Jeffrey L. Weisberg Memorial Prize in Poetry, University of Michigan, 2012