About

I received my PhD in American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California in 2007. My dissertation, “The Contours of the Sonic Color-Line: Slavery, Segregation, and the Cultural Politics of Listening” was a finalist for the American Studies Association Dissertation Prize. Currently Assistant Professor at SUNY Binghamton, I teach courses on African American literature, sound studies, and race and gender representation in popular music. I am also the lead organizer of the Binghamton University Sound Studies Collective. I have published in The Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, Social Identities and Social Text; my essay on race and recording will be reprinted in an edited volume on the politics of recorded sound forthcoming by Duke University Press. I am a founding member of the editorial collective for an academic sound studies blog called Sounding Out! at http://www.soundstudiesblog.com. When I am not writing, reading, or talking about writing and reading, I pursue my obsessions with old high fidelity test records, Tony Schwartz’s recordings of New York City, and the many many ways people define “noise.”