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I work at the intersection of Caribbean Studies and Black Diaspora Studies, focusing in particular on Pan-Africanism and Black Marxism. I have taught a variety of courses in these areas and am pursuing two book projects, one based on my dissertation, and another on the literature and culture of the Marcus Garvey movement.

My first book project is titled Peons, Toilers, and Vagabonds: A Literary History of the Dark Proletariat. Building on my dissertation, this project tells the story of how the “Black working class” emerges as a distinctive political and cultural force on the global stage from the early twentieth century to the era of decolonization. An article associated with the project, “Eric Walrond’s Anti-Patriarchal Modernism,” is forthcoming in American Literary History.

My second book project is tentatively titled The Marcus Garvey Extension: Garveyism, Mass Culture, and Global Black Modernism.  This project offers a new interpretation of Garveyism as a global mass cultural phenomenon. Taking as my point of departure Duke Ellington’s quip that “bop…is the Marcus Garvey extension,” I trace how Garveyite ideology has been propagated and “extended” across a wide range of Black diasporic cultural practices.