I am a historian working at the intersection between African American history and U.S. and the world with a focus on Black internationalism, transnational social movements, and the evolving global politics of white supremacy across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I teach courses on African American and African diaspora history, race, citizenship, and national identity, the history of social movements, left- and rightwing political mobilizations in U.S. history, histories of U.S. militarism, empire, and war-making, and public humanities. I received my Ph.D. with distinction in History and African American Studies with an M.A. Certificate in Public Humanities from Yale University in 2022.

I am currently researching and writing my first book, tentatively entitled Fascism Is Already Here: Antifascism and the Black Freedom Struggle. The book traces the varieties, characteristics, and manifold functions of antifascist thought and praxis within the Black freedom struggle in the United States from the 1930s to the 1970s. By mapping a long, coherent Black Antifascist Tradition in the United States and by following numerous actors, groups, practices, and institutions at the heart of Black theoretical and practical responses to fascism, the book argues for the centrality of Black political thought and grassroots activism to understanding the longterm “problem” of fascism in the United States in a way that moves beyond mere analogy or invective. The book also makes the case, through an analysis of Black antifascist thought, for an understanding of democracy wholly bound up with an antifascist politics of resistance. The dissertation on which the book manuscript is based was awarded the John Addison Porter Prize, one of two university-wide honors across the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. It also received the the Department of History’s Edwin W. Small Prize, awarded in recognition and furtherance of outstanding work in the field of U.S. history. I have a book chapter that draws on portions of this research in an edited volume recently published with Cambridge University Press and another essay in an edited volume forthcoming with Northwestern University Press (2024).

My work is grounded in an avid commitment to reaching beyond traditional academic audiences. Over the last decade, I have worked for a number of museums, artists, and other public institutions, including in the Oral History Department of the National September 11 Museum; for the artist Tino Sehgal at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; in education and public programs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; for the artist and filmmaker Hito Steyerl in an installation at the Park Avenue Armory; in curriculum development with the Henry Street Settlement House and the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies; at the German-American Institute in Heidelberg; and in education, research, and oral history the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. I currently serve as a co-organizer and Board Member with the April Institute, a nonprofit and education collective dedicated to interdisciplinary research and teaching about fascism and antifascism in the United States. I am also a volunteer at my university radio station, WTJU 91.1 FM, and am currently producing and hosting a podcast called “What It Is and How to Fight It,” which grapples with broad themes related to fascism and antifascism in the United States, past and present, through interviews with scholars, journalists, and activists.

I was raised in the U.S. Virgin Islands and later in Charlottesville, Virginia.