SELECTED INVITED TALKS

“Spike Lee’s Deconstructive Satire,” New Directions in Black Film and Media Studies:  Practice of History and Theory, University of Chicago, May, 17-18, 2024.

“Satirizing Satire: Representing Blackness and the Social Protest Mountain,” The Brandeis Novel Symposium: Percival Everett’s Erasure, October 20, 2023. 

“Satirizing Satire: Representing Blackness and the Social Protest Mountain,” Conseula Francis Lecture, College of Charleston, September 26, 2023.

“Black Sincerity: The Slipped Yoke of Black Feminist Irony,” Gayl Jones Symposium, Boston University, May 2022. (Virtual)  

 “PhD Pathways,” Yale University, April 14, 2022. (Virtual)

“The Butt of the Joke: Black Critical Humor and the Slipping of the Guard,” University of Notre Dame, March 18, 2022.

 RAI Goes to the Movies: Blindspotting and Sorry to Bother You, Rothmere American Institute, University of Oxford, March 11, 2021. (Virtual)

“Re-Reading Richard Wright’s Native Son, 20th Century Workshop, Princeton University, March 13, 2019. 

“The Imperative is Escape: Native Son and the Fugitive Imaginary,” New Scholars Symposium: Citizenship, Blackness, and Emancipatory Struggle, Bates College, November 9-11, 2018.

Campus Talks

Invited Panelist, “Humanities Now: Public Universities, Legislatures, and Academic Freedom.” University of Wisconsin, Madison, April 10, 2024.

Invited Moderator, “Wisconsin Union Directorate Distinguished Lecture Series Presents Ron Stallworth.” University of Wisconsin, Madison, November 2, 2022.

“Talkback at ‘Wisconsin Union Directorate Presents Spike Lee’s Bamboozled. University of Wisconsin, Madison, February 24, 2022.

 “On James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. Center for Humanities, University of Wisconsin, Madison, August 30, 2021.

 “Critical Uses of Black Humor,” Dr. Markus Brauer’s Graduate Psychology Lab, University of Wisconsin, Madison, November 18, 2020.

 Invited Panelist, “Cancel Culture: Do Our Mistakes Define Us?,” Wisconsin School of Business, March 02, 2020.

 SELECTED CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

“William Melvin Kelley’s White Despair and the Rewriting of the Postwar ‘White Life Novel,” Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, January 2024.

“Interrogating Race as an Analytic,” Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, January 2024.* Respondent. 

“Black Contexts and the Production of the Black Literary,” American Studies Association, Montreal, CA, November 2023.* 

“The Legacies and Afterlives of Black Modernism,” Modernist Studies Association, October 2023, Brooklyn, NY. Seminar Co-leader. 

“Rethinking Black Literary Satire and Black Literary Feminism,” Modern Language Association, San Francisco, January 2023.* 

“Gayl Jones and the Ruse of Discourse,” American Studies Association, New Orleans, November 2022.* 

“Birth of a Nation and Contemporary Black Film,” MELUS, New Orleans, LA. March 2022.  

“A Passable Human Being: The Narrative Ethics of Whiteness in William Melvin Kelley’s A Different Drummer,” Modern Language Association, Washington D.C. January 2022. (Virtual)*  

“Spike Lee’s Sentimental Humor.” Modern Language Association, Washington D.C. January 2022. (Virtual)*

 “Melodrama Redux: Looking Again at Spike Lee’s Blackkklansman,” American Studies Association, San Juan, PR. November 2021. (Virtual)*