About

Before joining the Institute for English and American Studies at the University of Potsdam, I was Professor of Gender and Diversity Studies at Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen (2017-2023) and Juniorprofessor of Ethnic and Postcolonial Studies at Ruhr-University Bochum (2009-2016). I am the author of two books, Embodying Difference: Critical Phenomenology and Narratives of Disability, Race, and Sexuality (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), which was translated into German as Verleiblichte Differenz: Kritische Phänomenologie und Narrative Texte über Behinderung, Race und Sexualität (Metzler 2024), and Black/Gay: The Harlem Renaissance, the Protest Era, and Constructions of Black Gay Identity in the 1980s and 90s (Michigan State UP and LIT, 2011). I co-edited the volumes Alle Uns: Differenz, Identität, Repräsentation (Edition Assemblage 2022; with Rebecca Racine Ramershoven), Queer Cinema (Ventil 2018; with Dagmar Brunow), and After the Storm: The Cultural Politics of Hurricane Katrina (Transcript 2015; with Evangelia Kindinger). My current research project is informed by questions of temporality and memory. I am particularly interested in the strategies writers, artists, and activists use to remediate archival materials of social movements that have been all but forgotten. My short films often focus on memory, archives, and queer history and sometimes use found footage. They were selected for screening at German and international film festivals, such as Short Film Festival Hamburg, Kasseler Dokfest, Iris Prize LGBTQ+ Film Festival Cardiff, and Hamburg International Queer Film Festival.