About the Scholar-Artist
Overview
Welcome to my digital academic portfolio. This is a curated space where my work as a performance scholar-artist, professor, and researcher comes together.
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As Assistant Professor and Program Director of Performance Studies at Xavier University of Louisiana, my work is grounded in Black feminist thought, digital performance, and creative inquiry. I study how everyday Black life becomes performance on stages, in archives, online, and in the rituals of daily living.
This overlap allows me to trace how curiosity, memory, and everyday life move between the personal and the scholarly, shaping questions that matter both inside and beyond the academy. Many of my projects are birthed out of genuine interests of events, experiences, songs, films, colors, movements, shapes, sounds, flavors, and rhythms that circulate in my own life. I find this approach to scholarship to be especially sustaining as I remain careful and committed to the work. In short, it is a privilege to have fun for a living—and to do so in ways that remain intellectually rigorous and socially meaningful.
For example, much of my research on Black hair grows from the first show I directed at Louisiana State University, Nappy Hairstories. That production started to shape the questions I continue to ask and leading to my first guest artist workshop. This was an invitation to Xavier in 2019 to teach students how to write their own hairstories. These moments reflect how performance allows my lived experience to linger, transform, and take scholarly form in performances, publication, and in teaching.
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I am blessed to have grown up in a family that nurtured creativity. My dad was a professional photographer and graphic designer. I hope those influences are visible throughout this digital academic portfolio. Therefore experiencing this portfolio digitally is itself a form of performance. The ways I have curated images, sound, moving media, links, structure, and supporting documents are intentional acts of composition that reflect how I think about performance, scholarship, and Black life.
Similar to my own research, the organization of this site invites viewers to move through the work rather than simply consume it. The site functions not only as documentation, but as an ongoing performance of how I understand knowledge-making, storytelling, and scholarly life.
Feel free to explore at your own pace, however I have left suggested prompts in places where I hope to leave with a deeper understanding of who I am as a scholar, what I do as a performer, and how I teach as a professor. Performance shapes almost everything around us.
You can also visit my Xavier faculty profile for a quick overview.​
Education
As a native of Dallas, Texas, Louisiana became my second home almost nine years ago. I earned my PhD in Communication Studies from Louisiana State University, where I specialized in both the Performance Studies and Rhetoric concentrations within the department. I also completed minors in Women’s Studies and African and African American Studies. This interdisciplinary approach has allowed me to explore embodied communication, critical/cultural studies, and Black feminist thought across disciplines.
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Before attending LSU, I completed both my B.A. and M.A. in Communication Studies at the University of North Texas, where I also focused on performance and rhetoric. My academic experiences allowed me to collectively shape this approach to studying Black life, performance, and culture. Cultivating an interdisciplinary approach to these research interests has helped me understand the unique needs of students at Xavier who are interested in a wide range of topics that will lead them to successful careers.
This footage was recorded at Algiers Point in New Orleans, Louisiana using a DJI.
"The Lord is my light and my salvation— whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life— of whom shall I be afraid?" Psalm 27:1
I recorded this footage using a drone at Boat Launch Point in Metairie, Louisiana. Song credit is Pastor Shirley Caesar, "This Joy I Have." I combine the two forms of media to emphasize how we can allow the munedaness of life to speak for itself.
"You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have."
-Maya Angelou
Experience
I began teaching standalone college courses during my master’s program at UNT in January 2013. After that first semester, I realized that I wanted to be a professor for the long term. Over the past decade, I have taught across a wide range of institutional contexts, including R1 universities, community colleges, and HBCUs. This breadth of experience has shaped my belief that performance is a powerful tool for learning across diverse student populations. In particular, it has deepened my commitment to helping minoritized students encounter performance-based scholarship as a resource for self-definition, critical inquiry, and positive identity formation.​
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In my current position, I reshape the curriculum, mentor students, and develop creative and scholarly projects that expand the possibilities of performance within an HBCU context. As Xavier is the only HBCU degree-granting institution in Performance Studies, my role uniquely positions me to integrate teaching, research, and artistic practice in ways that support both student growth and program development. This work allows me to help shape a program that not only reflects the interdisciplinary depth of the field but also centers the cultural, historical, and creative richness of Black performance traditions.
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I am excited to share examples of these goals throughout this digital portfolio. Here you will find descriptions, documents, photographs, and links that illustrate what performance looks like in practice. Seeing performance is just as important as reading about it, and I hope this space offers a dynamic view into the work I engage with as a teacher, scholar, and artist.
Mandeville, Louisiana. All footage recorded with drones purchased using Xavier new faculty funds.
"But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." John 14:26