Scholarship
My research focuses on questions of gender, agency, and subjectivity in the early modern period. My current projects interrogate how scholarly practices and privileging of certain texts and narratives contributes—often unwittingly—to the oppression of figures from the early modern period.
Works in Progress
Books/ Monographs
How Not to Be a Misogynist: Un/Intentional Sexism in Early Modern Studies.
This edited collection engages in readings and analyses of early modern texts from an anti-misogynistic perspective and discusses a range of topics, including ageism, sexism, gender expectations, and female emotional labor.
(Dis)Obedient Wives: Manifestations of Female Agency in Early Modern City Comedies
My book project interrogates two principal questions: What forms of agency are available to women of the middling sort in early modern city plays? And how do we, as scholars, identify and recognize dramatic representations of female agency. Throughout this project, I delineate three models of agency—defiant, subversive, acquiescent—through an examination of exemplary city comedies from Jonson, Dekker, Middleton, and Shakespeare. By looking at texts (and characters in these texts) that are largely under-examined, I develop reading and interpretive practices that make it possible for scholars of female agency to locate it in instances of obedience rather than defiance of societal expectations of conduct.
Articles
“‘This was thy daughter’: Lavinia’s Agency and Empowerment in Titus Andronicus.” Under review, Cahiers Élisabéthains.
“Mistress Allwit’s Churching: Childbirth and Female Community in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside.” Under review, Early Theatre.
Conferences
Panels Organized and Chaired
“How Not to Be a Misogynist.” Session organizer and workshop leader. Shakespeare Association of America Conference, Boston, MA. March 2025.
“Female Agency in the Devotional and the Spiritual.” Panel chair. Renaissance Society of America Conference, Boston, MA. March 2025.
“On the English Stage.” Panel monitor. Renaissance Society of America Virtual Conference. December 2022.
“Early Modern City Comedies.” Session organizer and workshop leader. Shakespeare Association of America Conference, Jacksonville, FL. April 2022.
Conference Papers
“Find the Power: Rethinking Possibilities of Agency, Gender, and Class in Early Modern Drama.” Renaissance Society of America Virtual Conference, December 2022
“The Paradox of Chastity: The Case of Early Modern Female Characters of the Middling Sort.” Renaissance Society of America, Virtual Conference, April 2021
“Immigrant Passing: A Consideration of Race, Class, and Status in Early Modern Drama.” Shakespeare Association of America Conference, Denver, CO, April 2020. (Conducted via Zoom due to COVID-19.
“The Impossibility of Chastity: The Case of Early Modern Female Characters of the Middling Sort.”Shakespeare Association of America Conference, Washington, DC, April 2019.
“Subjectivity through Over-Regulation: Communal Power and Female Agency in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Westward Ho.” Shakespeare Association of America Conference, Atlanta, GA, April 2017.
“‘Here Comes Our Gossips Now’: Notions of Selfhood and Agency in Thomas Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside.” Shakespeare Association of America Conference, New Orleans, LA, March 2016.
“Destructible Docile Bodies: Foucauldian Notions of Military Rule in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus.” Renaissance Society of America Conference, New York, March 2014.
Book Reviews
Amy Kenny and Kaara L. Peterson, eds. “Humorality in Early Modern Art, Material Culture, and Performance.” Renaissance Quarterly 76.3, Fall 2023, 1188-89.
