My research focuses on the issue of solidarity. I explore the varied forms that solidarity takes: from the care shown towards individuals experiencing disability to collectivities that organize beyond the family to the collaborative labor between artists. I am especially concerned with how the material conditions necessary for the emergence of these social relations can be realized.
I answer these questions through an analysis of contemporary American literature and art, ranging from novels and life writing to popular music to film and television. What interests me is how art and literature formalize emergent social relations of solidarity. My research contributes to recent formalist approaches developed by critics like Anna Kornbluh, Caroline Levine, and Sianne Ngai that theorize aesthetic forms as essential to understanding the structures of social and political life. I follow these critics in tracing how forms move between or mediate art and society, linking the aesthetic and the social.
My research draws on my training in the field of disability studies. I mainly focus on the intersection of disability and race. I take seriously Sami Schalk's contention that Black thinkers of disability have not been recognized by the white-dominant disability rights movement: I counter such an omission by drawing in my own research on Black feminist writings and activism. My research works toward imagining a coalitional politics grounded in the experience and expertise of marginalized people with disabilities.
I answer these questions through an analysis of contemporary American literature and art, ranging from novels and life writing to popular music to film and television. What interests me is how art and literature formalize emergent social relations of solidarity. My research contributes to recent formalist approaches developed by critics like Anna Kornbluh, Caroline Levine, and Sianne Ngai that theorize aesthetic forms as essential to understanding the structures of social and political life. I follow these critics in tracing how forms move between or mediate art and society, linking the aesthetic and the social.
My research draws on my training in the field of disability studies. I mainly focus on the intersection of disability and race. I take seriously Sami Schalk's contention that Black thinkers of disability have not been recognized by the white-dominant disability rights movement: I counter such an omission by drawing in my own research on Black feminist writings and activism. My research works toward imagining a coalitional politics grounded in the experience and expertise of marginalized people with disabilities.