I am a PhD Candidate in the Moving Image Studies program at Georgia State University, and I hold an MA from The University of Texas-Austin in Radio-TV-Film and a BA from Carleton College in Classical Languages. My research uses a theory of vernacular posthumanism to explore the ways in which both the human and the nonhuman are imagined within contemporary visual culture. My dissertation is entitled “Vernacular Posthumanism: Visual Culture and Material Imagination,” and it diagnoses and theorizes the circulation of a posthuman image vernacular within contemporary culture, a vernacular that speaks of the growing dissolution of boundaries between humans and nonhumans and the increasingly pervasive ideological stance that collapses information and material, envisioning a networked world where everything is fundamentally reducible to binary units of exchange. My primary objects of analysis include: DNA portraits, human migration maps, Fast Cheap & Out of Control (Errol Morris, 1997), the films of Stanley Kubrick, Krzysztof Kieslowski, and David Cronenberg, 300 (Zach Sndyer, 2006), the work of Damien Hirst, BodyWorlds, and various video games.

I have recently taught classes on the topics of film analysis, film history, Stanley Kubrick, Krzysztof Kieślowski, David Cronenberg and posthumanism, and exploitation film. My research interests primarily involve film, new media, and visual culture, but my work also explores animal studies, phenomenology, and theories of materiality. See the “Courses” section for some example syllabi.