CV

Academic Qualifications

• Rutgers University–PhD, Women’s and Gender Studies, August 2014-October 2022
  • Awarded a PhD after successfully defending their dissertation on how feelings circulate in video games to alter perceptions of humanity and difference both in game and out.
• CUNY Brooklyn College–BA, Women’s Studies, August 2009-May 2013 
  • Received a Bachelor’s of Arts in Women’s and Gender Studies with a double minor in Political Science and LGBTQ Studies. Graduated Summa Cum Laude, with a 3.97 Cumulative GPA. 
• Brooklyn Technical High School, Media Communications, September 2004-June 2008 
  • Majored in Media Communications and completed coursework in Journalism, Web Design, and Media Production.

Professional Experience

• Adjunct Faculty, New Jersey City University, September 2025-Present
  • Was rehired after their Postdoctoral Fellowship to continue to teach courses related to digital humanities.
• Part Time Lecturer, Rutgers University, September 2022-Present 
  • Develops and teaches their own sections of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies undergraduate courses, both online and in-person, to educate students on the interactions between gender, race and other categories of difference.
• Postdoctoral Research Fellow, New Jersey City University, April 2023-June 2025 
  • Works on curriculum development to create a Digital Humanities (DH) minor that can meet the needs of students at this Hispanic-serving public institution. Responsible for designing the minor and the new courses that comprise it based on research related to best practices and policies for the Digital Humanities curriculum. Delivers workshops on research to engage students with DH work and develop their interest in our minor. Teaches courses that blend DH tools with women of color feminist theory. Collaborates with faculty and administration throughout the university to develop programming to bring DH skills to our students. Assist with budget planning to ensure the grant is run effectively and within budget, making the best use of available resources. Led biweekly sessions to discuss theory and tools to build DH competencies among faculty.
• Teaching Assistant, Rutgers University, August 2016-May 2022 
  • Developed and taught their own sections of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies undergraduate courses, both online and in-person, to educate students on the interactions between gender, race and other categories of difference. Also worked as a teaching assistant with the Writing Program to teach writing and critical thinking.
• College Assistant, CUNY Brooklyn College, June 2009-August 2015
  • Worked with multiple offices including the Registrar’s Office, Transfer Evaluation Office, Political Science Department and the Women’s Studies department to provide students with help regarding transcripts, college policies, major requirements and registration.
• College Assistant, CUNY Brooklyn College, September 2014-August 2015
  • Built online resources for students within the Political Science, Women’s Studies and LGBTQ Studies programs. Worked as one half of a team tasked with developing a workshop series to introduce LGBTQ Studies students to topics like intersectionality and feminist media studies. Facilitated a workshop on gender, race and sexuality in Orange is the New Black for students in the program.

Research Interests

game studies, Black feminist theory, women of color feminisms, affect theory, assemblage theory, feminist science and technology studies, feminist media studies, queer theory, critical race theory, disability studies, fat studies, masculinity studies, post-humanism, monster theory, object oriented ontology

Academic Publications

• Analyzing Adventure Time: Critical Essays about Cartoon Network’s World of Ooo, ed. Paul Thomas, McFarland Books, Forthcoming 2023
  • “Making a New Meaning For Man in The Land of OOO: Object Oriented Ontology, The Human and Difference in Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time”
• Coloring Outside the Lines, ed. Rukmini Pande, University of Iowa Press, December 2020 
  • “Comedic Content Creators, Fake Gamers, and Videogame Vixens: Gender, Race and Authenticity in YouTube Let’s Play Culture”
• Buffy to Batgirl: Essays on Female Power, Evolving Femininity and Gender Roles in Science Fiction and Fantasy, ed. Julie M. Still and Zara T. Wilkinson, McFarland Books, 2019 
  • “Using the Animator’s Tools to Dismantle the Master’s House?: Gender, Race, Sexuality and Disability in Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time and Steven Universe”

Journalism

• That VideoGame Blog, 2015-2020
  • Contributed gaming reviews that discuss the gender, racial and sexual politics of new game releases as well as providing coverage for gaming events like the Games for Change festival.
• Streaks of Lavender, 2018-Present
  • Part of a queer collective writing and publishing zines related to resistance and activism through artistic practice. First issue centered on rage was released at the end of April 2018. Further issues currently in planning.
• Mookychick.co.uk, 2014
  • Published a variety of features and reviews about films, albums, and books. 

Organizing

• We The People NYC, Brooklyn, NY January 2025-Present
  • Part-time organizer working on two separate teams of this mutual aid organization dedicated to improving the lives of people in Brooklyn and Harlem. Working with the Fundraising and Outreach Team to plan initiatives that connect community members in service of liberation as well as the Research and Info Team dedicated to helping neighbors access resources and informational materials that they need to thrive.

Courses Taught

• Gender and Popular Culture (Gaming and Power): New Jersey City University, Spring 2026
  • Developed this course on video games to consider their culture in a variety of contexts, ranging from gaming genres, online discourse, cosplay, fan fiction, and gaming adaptations, while considering how repeated representations change our understanding of gender and race.  
• Science, Technology, and Power: New Jersey City University, Spring 2026
  • Designed this course to dissect how historical injustices—such as racism, sexism, ableism, and colonialism—distort our perceptions of knowledge, data, and truth by introducing students to feminist science and technology studies.  
• Introduction to Digital Humanities: New Jersey City University, Fall 2024
  • Designed this course to teach students theory and methods related to digital humanities with a critical ethnic studies focus. Students completed projects in text analysis, network analysis, mapping, data visualization, and basic coding and game design using Twine. 
• Feminist Practices: New Jersey City University, Fall 2023
  • Developed this course to give seniors majoring in Women’s Studies an overview of key theoretical frameworks related to gender, race, sexuality, and human difference more generally. Worked with students to develop research proposals that they would continue working on in their senior seminar the next semester. 
• Gender, Art, and Society: Rutgers University, Spring 2023
  • Developed this fully online course to give students an understanding of how women and trans people have contributed to and shaped visual arts even as their work has historically been neglected. This course teaches students to analyze art from the perspective of gender and its interactions with other forms of difference.
• Introduction to Gender, Race and Sexuality: Rutgers University, Fall 2016-Fall 2023
  • Developed this course to give students an overview of feminist theory and its multiple fields of engagement including sections on biopolitics, critical race theory, neoliberalism, disability studies, fat studies, settler colonial studies and many more. Have so far taught 11 sections of this course with over 200 students total. Have consistently maintained higher than average course evaluation results.
• Homosexuality and Visual Culture, Fall 2022
  • Developed and taught this fully online course analyzing the importance of visual arts for LGBTQ communities through an expansive approach that puts illustration, painting and sculpture alongside video games and memes to understand how sexuality, and other categories of difference, are constructed visually in the past and present.
• Introduction to Critical Sexuality Studies, Fall 2022
  • Developed and taught this course charting the shifting meanings of sexuality in historical, contemporary, cross-cultural, and global contexts through an intersectional analysis of sexuality’s interactions with other categories of difference.
• Expository Writing: Rutgers University, Fall 2019-Spring 2021
  • Worked with The Writing Program in order to teach two sections of this course designed to develop students’ critical thinking skills in service of strengthening their academic writing. Graded papers and provided extensive feedback for students on how to improve their essays as well. Developed classroom activities to most effectively model critical thinking skills.
• The Gendered Body (Horror and the Grotesque): Rutgers University, Winter 2019-Present
  • Developed and taught this fully online course highlighting how oppressive conceptions of human difference are mobilized within horror films to uphold normative bodies as privileged and frame non-normative bodies as deviant, grotesque, horrific and worthy of extinction.
• Gendered Professions: Rutgers University, Fall 2018 
  • Assisted Dr. Julia Wartenberg in this course which analyzed how care is valued and devalued transnationally by considering care in the context of nursing and teaching. Maintained forums, graded student responses and provided comments to ensure understanding of the material.
• Comparative Feminism (Black Feminist Thought in the African Diaspora): Rutgers University, Fall 2018 
  • Developed this upper level course illuminating how Blackness is differently experienced and conceptualized by Black feminist theorists dependent on historical and geographical context.   

Workshop Facilitations

• “Demystifying Large Language Models: AI & Ethics,” DEFCon Presents: New Jersey City University, April 15th, 2025
  • Designed and facilitated a workshop that gives students a better understanding of how Large Language Models and AI function using hands-on examples and exercises, while also introducing them to important ethical considerations in their usage.
• Social Justice Game Design with Twine: José Marti STEM Academy, March 31st-May 17th
  • Designed and facilitated a month and a half long workshop series introducing students to Twine and basic coding to guide them in creating videogames that look at a social justice topic of their choice.
• “Analysis Is The New Black: Gender, Race and Sexuality in Orange is the New Black,” LGBTQ Studies Workshop Series: Brooklyn College, October 29th, 2013
  • Designed a workshop to highlight the importance of media analysis and pop culture criticism for undergraduate students through an analysis of the depictions of race, gender, sexuality and incarceration within the popular Netflix series Orange Is the New Black.

Academic Presentations

• 2025 NWSA Conference, San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 15th, 2025
  • “What A Polygonal Body Can Do: Gaming, Affect, and Audre Lorde”
• Lesbian Lives Conference 2025, CUNY Graduate Center, October 25th, 2025
  • “The Power and Potential of Pornographic Pixels: Lesbian Intimacy, Sensuality, and Futurity In Ghosthug Games’ Hardcoded”
• ACH 2025, Virtual, June 11th, 2025
  • Digitally presented a WorkAdventure session entitled, “Pixels of the Flesh: The Potential and Pitfalls of Videogames in the Classroom”
• DEFCon Presents, New Jersey City University, March 28th, 2024
  • “Digital Intimacies & Desiring Machines.”
• 2024 MLA Convention, Pennsylvania Convention Center, January 6th, 2024
  • “Cancer, Care, and Constraint: On Teaching Empathy Through Gaming.” 
• NYU Faculty First look, New York University, March 27th, 2019
  • “Our Games, Our Selves: Meaning, Difference and Feeling in Gaming”
• Bodies of Power/Theory in the Flesh, Rutgers University, October 5th, 2018 
  • “Pixels of the Flesh: The Progressive Potential and Limits of Video Games in the Feminist Classroom?” 
• Pippi to Ripley 4: Ithaca College, April 22nd, 2017  
  • “Kitties, Tiffies and Tough Guys: Gender, Race and Authenticity in YouTube Let’s Play Culture” 
• Summer Doctoral Institute for Difference in Media and Culture: USC Annenberg, June 22nd, 2016 
  • “From Cooties to Cunts: Misogyny, Subjectivity and Affect in GamerGate” 
• 2015 NWSA Conference: Precarity: Hilton Milwaukee Center, November 15th, 2015 
  • “Honoring the Bodies Beyond the Binary: Sexual Difference, Intersexuality and Inclusivity through Spinoza” 
• Pippi to Ripley 3: Ithaca College, May 2nd, 2015 
  • “Pixels in Distress: The Affective Economy of Video Games” 
• Human Futures: Rutgers New Brunswick, April 24th, 2015 
  • “Becoming-Digital, Becoming-Black and Becoming-Orc: The Limits of the Posthuman In Video Games” 
• Buffy To Batgirl: Rutgers Camden, May 2nd, 2014 
  • “Using the Animator’s Tools to Dismantle the Master’s House: The Subversive Socialization Potential of Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time”

Creative Writing

• “Pink and Blue”, Raising Mothers, October 2020

Poetry Readings

• Roots. Wounds. Words. Counterpult Reading Series: Zoom, January 24th, 2021 
  • Read, “My Grandpa, The Potato,” a piece about their late grandfather about grief, loss and love.
• Roots. Wounds. Words. Virtual Reading Showcase: Zoom, April 5th, 2020
  • Read, “miss(ed) identifications,” a piece about heteronormativity, queer identity and desire. 
• Roots. Wounds. Words. Reading Showcase: Cafe Con Libros: New York, February 7th, 2020
  • Read, “Pink and Blue,” a piece honoring their late tia, Sonia Fontanez about grief, loss and love.
• Streaks of Lavender Zine Launch Party: Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art: New York, April 30th 2019
  • Read poem “thing 1 & thing 2” about cycles of abuse, trauma and forgiveness. 
• Flow Fest: The Performance Project @ University Settlement: New York, March 2nd, 2018
  • Read the poems, “Bad,” “Cypress Hills” and “Blood Relation,” centering on Latinx ancestry, maternal lineage and mortality.
• Creative Writing for Queer Resistance: Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art: New York, December 18th, 2018 
  • Read the poems, “Looper,” “Dining Room” and “Scorpio Sun; Scorpio Venus; Scorpio Pluto,” ruminating on queer desire, queer ancestors and ritual. 

Videogames

• DISSERTATION DEFENSE, FORTHCOMING, 2027. 
  • A visual novel currently in development about navigating the PhD process as a queer, disabled, student of color. It interweaves personal experience alongside statistical data in a satirical and accessible manner to emphasize the particular difficulties of marginalized students while also providing advice necessary to survive. 

Honors

• Faculty First Look: New York University, 2018-2019 
  • Invited to participate in a workshop series spanning the academic year designed to ready scholars of color for the academic job market and the tenure track.
• Creative Writing for Queer Resistance: Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Fall 2018 
  • Selected for an eight-week creative writing course for queer identified writers using creative writing as a platform for social justice activism. The course culminated in a public reading at the museum.
• Summer Doctoral Institute for Difference in Media and Culture: USC Annenberg, June 20-24, 2016
  • Chosen to present their work in a weeklong institute for graduate students and senior scholars studying media within their respective fields.
• National Women’s Studies Association, Women of Color Leadership Program, November 12, 2015 
  • Participated in a one-day workshop on leadership skills for female and femme identified scholars of color.

Awards

• The School of Graduate Studies’ University & Bevier Dissertation Completion Fellowship, 2021-2022
• Rutgers University Teaching Assistantship, The Writing Program, 2019-2021
• Rutgers University Teaching Assistantship, Women’s and Gender Studies, 2016-2019 
• National Women’s Studies Association Travel Grant, 2015 
• Rutgers University Graduate Fellowship, 2014-2016 
• Brooklyn College Senior Women’s and Gender Studies Scholarship, 2012-2013

Competencies & Skills