RESEARCH

Publications

• “From Maid to Machine: Her, Hegemony and the Twenty-First Century Mammy” (Journal for Cinema and Media Studies, July 2025)

• “‘Hey Google, Talk Like Issa’: Black Voiced Digital Assistants and the Reshaping of Racial Labor” (Sounding Out, June 2023)

• “Producing ‘Reality’: ‘Authentic’ Representations of Black Women in Reality Television”  (MMUF Journal, 2015)

Invited Talks and Conference Presentations

• “Evolutions of Domestic Labor: Service-Performing Devices in United States Homes and Lived Spaces.” Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, May 2025

• “Mammies, Media, and Laborsaving Devices: Aunt Jemima Ads as Catalysts for Contemporary Virtual Assistants.” Ford Fellows Conference, National Academies, June 2024

• “Racialized Sound in U.S. Cinema: AI Voices and Vocal Performances.” Keynote Lecture, Environmental and Postcolonial Media Theories Research Colloquium. UC Santa Barbara, May 2024

• “The Sound of Her Voice: Vocal Performances of Race, Gender, and Subjecthood in Spike Jonze’s Her.” Performance Studies Summer Institute, Northwestern University, July 2023

• “It’s Like Having You There in Person: Laborsaving Devices and Domestic Service in the United States.” Backward Glances Conference, Northwestern University, Fall 2022

• “Mechanical Maids: Virtual Assistants and Black Women’s Labor Histories.” School of Communication Graduate Research Symposium, February 2022

• “Alexa, Siri, and Aunt Jemima: How Black Women’s Labor Haunts AI Assistants.” Office of Fellowships Dissertation Research Salon, Northwestern University, May 2021

• “Queering the ‘Real’: An Exploration of Realness in Paris is Burning.” Queertopia Conference, Northwestern University, February 2019