I am a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Illinois State University. I teach courses on early modern and 18th century literature, women’s literature, gender, and interdisciplinary humanities, and my research considers the intersections of women’s writing, political identity, and fashion in the 17th century.

Dressing Authority

My current book project is entitled Dressing Authority: The Politics of Fashion in English Women’s Writing, 1616-1676. In it, I argue for the political power of dress in English women’s writing during the Stuart 17th century. I show how resistant discourses of dress (representations of clothing and dress-objects that are odd, inappropriate, or unusual) populate women’s literary texts in this period, allowing women writers to articulate forms of intra-party dissent within their writings.

My work has also appeared in English Literary Renaissance, Early Modern Women, Clio, Journal of British Studies, and in several edited collections.