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Academic Portfolio

Education

2021 - Present

Howard University | PhD Candidate, English Language and Literature

Dissertation: Racial Recursivity: Play, Blackness, and History in Contemporary Video Games

2020

New York University | MA in English Language and Literature

MA Thesis: Literary Alibi: The Consumption of African American and Dalit Literature

2017

Texas Wesleyan University | BA Summa Cum Laude and Departmental Honors in English

Research Interests

My research and teaching interests include Video Game Studies; Game Studies; Critical Race Theory; African American Literature; Digital Humanities; Post-Colonial Theory; American Literature; Dalit Literature; Harlem Renaissance; Cultural Studies; Afro-Futurism; Comic Studies.

Dissertation Abstract

​My dissertation, titled “Racial Recursivity: Play, Blackness, and History in Contemporary Video Games,” explores how Blackness operates as a narrative device in video games. I put forth Racial Recursivity as an interpretative framework to explain how contemporary triple-a video games are continually informed by historical narratives around race while simultaneously rewriting the past to correspond to contemporary racial ideology. This project looks at various award-winning triple-a video games published from 2000-2023 and places them in context with the culture of neoliberal multiculturism that has arisen since the end of the Cold War to argue video games are increasingly the privileged medium for upholding neoliberal racial ideology. For this aim, mainstream video games often rewrite racial history under the guise of neoliberal antiracism by promoting multiculturalism, colorblind meritocracy, and stark individualism while ignoring structural considerations that promote racial justice and equity. The first chapter explores the persistence of the blood as race metaphor in Victorian gothic literature, HP Lovecraft’s fiction, and the 2016 video game Bloodborne. The second chapter looks at race in games set in the Old American West and argues these games create a racial taxonomy that is simultaneously indebted to nineteenth-century Western dime novels and early 20th-century American Nativism. The third chapter turns to gamic adaptations of Heart of Darkness that remove any reference to Africa, and the fourth chapter explores the game industry’s coopting of Civil Rights iconography as a celebration of colorblindness. The fifth chapter looks at the racial history of the zombie and argues contemporary video games use the zombie to usher in a post-racial landscape. Racial Recursivity hopes to explore the underlying racial ideology within various gamic texts, note how these logics connect to previous historical ideas around race, and acknowledge how these racial logics create a self-referential feedback loop by their continual reoccurrence.

Publications

Conference Presentations 

  • College Language Association, CLA 2024, “Black Ludology: Play in African American Literature,” (Apr. 2024).

  • Modern Language Association, MLA 2024, Session Organizer for The Burden and Privilege of HBCU Graduate Students in the Anti-CRT era, Jan. 2024.

  • JaneCon 2023, A Court of Fey and Flowers: Challenging Hegemonic White Masculinity in Table Top Gaming, Jul. 2023 

  • 13th Annual African, African American, and Diaspora Studies Interdisciplinary Conference, James Madison University, Of One Blood and the Upside-Down Black Skyscraper, Feb. 2023.

  • Modern Language Association, MLA 2023, Defying “prospero ling. Go” in Far Cry 6, Jan. 2023.

  • 12th Annual African, African American, and Diaspora Studies Interdisciplinary Conference, James Madison University, Racialized Masculinity in Watchmen, Feb. 2022.

  • Modern Language Association, MLA 2022, Literary Alibi: Langston Hughes, Namdeo Dhasal, and the Consumption of African American and Dalit Literature, Jan. 2022.

  • Endnotes: (Sub)Merged, University of British Columbia, “There, in the old water”– Nikky Finney’s Black Hydro-Poetics, May 2021. 

  • The End Times: Approaches to the Apocalypse, CUNY Graduate Center, Police Innocence and Race in The Walking Dead Comics, Mar. 2021.

  • 11th Annual African, African American, and Diaspora Studies Interdisciplinary Conference, James Madison University, Literary Alibi: Langston Hughes, Namdeo Dhasal, and the Consumption of African American and Dalit Literature, Feb. 2021.

  • University of Alabama Languages Conference, University of Alabama, The Violence of the Colonial Gaze: Postcolonialism in “The Diamond Lens,” Feb. 2020.

  • Under Water, New York University, Submerging Ink: A Hydrocolonial Reading of American Sailor’s Tattoos, Dec. 2019.

  • University College Day, Texas Wesleyan University, Humanism Lost: John Milton and Neo-Platonism, Apr. 2017.

  • University College Day, Texas Wesleyan University, “I love myself”—Conscious Rap and Transcendentalism, Apr. 2017.

  • University College Day, Texas Wesleyan University, Oroonoko: A Flawed Hero, Apr. 2016.

  • University College Day, Texas Wesleyan University, You! Will Live Forever, Apr. 2016.

  • University College Day, Texas Wesleyan University, “Better to Reign in Hell”: Satan in Paradise Lost, Apr. 2016.

Digital Humanities Projects and Publications

  • Black Omniscient Technological Skepticism in Contemporary Black Literature and Music, Youtube, May 2023. A video essay exploring how Black writers acknowledge, critique, and respond to the growing import of emergent technologies in contemporary life. This video attempts to find an answer by surveying various moments of Black omniscient technological skepticism in contemporary Black literature and music.

  • Race in Video Games iOS Application, Apple Appstore, May 2022. A free and publicly available iOS application that introduces users to the history of racial representation in video games.

  • Westworld: A Climate Change Adaptation, Itch.io, May 2020. This free-to-play Twine game re-imagine the first seasons of the HBO science-fiction series Westworld through an ecocritical lens.

Service

  • Co-Chair of Committee on the Status of Graduate Students in the Humanities (CSGSH), 1 Jul. 2023 – 30 Jun. 2025, Modern Language Association (MLA)

  • Elected Delegate Assembly Member for Middle Atlantic Region, 8 Jan. 2024 – 10 Jan. 2027, Modern Language Association (MLA)

  • Member of Committee on the Status of Graduate Students in the Humanities (CSGSH), 1 Jul. 2022 – 30 Jun. 2025, Modern Language Association (MLA)

  • ACE Scholars Coach for Rising Seniors at Howard University, Sep. 2022 – May 2023, Howard University

  • Chair of Election Graduate Student Council, Aug. 2021 – May 2022, Howard Graduate School of Arts and Science

Fellowships

  • Frederick Douglass Scholars Fellowship, $24,000 Howard University, 2023-2024

  • Frederick Douglass Scholars Fellowship, $24,000 Howard University, 2022-2023

  • Frederick Douglass Scholars Fellowship, $20,000, Howard University, 2021-2022

Grants

  • HU Doctoral Scholars Program, $5,000, Howard University, Summer 2024

  • Intro to Digital Humanities Scholars Program as part of the Black Book Interactive Project (BBIP) Scholars Program, $1,100, The University of Kansas, Spring 2023-Spring 2024

  • HU-VT Digital Humanities Residency, Travel Stipend, Virginia Tech University, Spring 2023

Honors and Awards 

  • Preparing Future Faculty Scholar, Howard University, 2023-24

  • Preparing Future Faculty Scholar, Howard University, 2022-23

  • Preparing Future Faculty Scholar, Howard University, 2021-22

  • GSAS Threesis Academic Challenge Selection, New York University, 2020

  • University Honors Scholar, Texas Wesleyan University, 2017

  • English Departmental Honors Scholar, Texas Wesleyan University, 2017

  • Alpha Chi for Top 1% of GPAs, Texas Wesleyan University, 2017

  • Sigma Tau Delta for Outstanding English Majors, Texas Wesleyan University, 2017

  • Award for Best Graduating English Major, Texas Wesleyan University, 2017

  • Mortar Board for Outstanding Leadership, Scholarship, and Service, Texas Wesleyan University, 2016-17

  • Tau Sigma for Top Transfer Students, Texas Wesleyan University, 2016

  • Ruth Keating Literary Award for Outstanding Study in Poetry, Texas Wesleyan University, 2016

  • Phi Theta Kappa Community College Honor Society, El Centro, 2014-15

Teaching

  • African American Literature Since 1940, Instructor, Department of English, Howard University, Spring 2024

  • American Literary Foundations Teaching Assistant, Department of English, Howard University, Fall 2022 

  • Lecture on Walt Whitman for American Literary Foundations, Department of English, Howard University, 16 Feb. 2022

  • Graduate Assistant Writing Center Tutor, Department of English, Howard University, Aug. 2021-Present

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