I am currently a PhD student in American Literary Studies in the Department of English. Before coming to UNM, I went to school in North Carolina where I got my Bachelor of Arts in English at Salem College and my Master of Arts in English literature at North Carolina State University. In between my time in school, I have worked in the government sector at taught Composition courses for two years at a community college.

I came to UNM because of my research interests in motherhood in American literature. I wanted to look at literature written by Chicana, Native American, and African American women in the United States. Because I already had a background in African-American literature, I came to UNM because it has strong programs and links to Chicana/o and Native American/Indigenous literature and narrative studies. It was a good choice for my research and teaching interests to take an in-depth look at these studies.

Much of humanities research is spending hours in a library reading. Some of that reading involves looking at the library’s archives that have boxes of papers on important people in history. This semester, I am going to be traveling to the Witliff Library at the University of Texas San Marcos campus to look at the Sandra Cisneros collection. In 2015, Cisneros donated 305 boxes worth of documents that show her life, writing, career, and personal and business endeavors. Part of being a Humanities scholar is looking at the life of the person you are researching and I get to spend two weeks going through those boxes to discover more information about Cisneros and see what inspired her writings. This will be part of my dissertation project. In the past, I’ve conducted research at Duke University’s Rubenstein Library as well.