I am a critical philosopher, media historian, moving-image enthusiast and Assistant Professor of Film and Media in the Literature Section at MIT.
My research and creative scholarly output approach ethics as a problem of environmental and historical relation. I have particular interest in how Arthur Schopenhauer’s and Friedrich Nietzsche’s aesthetics share poetic and temporal resonance with Black and Indigenous thought.
My current book project, Becoming Amphibious, or the question of ethics in white supremacist worlding, is an auto-philosophical genealogy—weaving German aesthetics, Black studies, paleontology, and media philosophy in search of ethical movements appropriate to contemporary crises. I have published essays in New German Critique, History + Technology, qui parle, and Millennium Film Journal. Before returning to academia in 2015, I produced artisinal ice cream for Stogo Vegan Gelato in the East Village, NYC while working as editor for Millennium Film Journal. I was associate producer for the Aubin Picture’s documentary Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity (2014) and was pre-production coordinator for the films Chavela (2017) and Dispatches from Cleveland (2017)
I completed a PhD in Film and Media from the University of California-Berkeley with a Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory in 2021. I also hold an MA in German Literature and Culture (UC Berkeley, 2018) and an MA in Humanities (University of Chicago, 2008). Before joining MIT, I was a fellow with the Michigan Society of Fellows and Assistant Professor of Film, Television and Media at University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.
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