Hello!

I have had a very unusual professional journey. My undergraduate degree is actually in musical theatre (which I still love). In the early 2000s, while living in New York, I had two formative experiences that pushed me toward the type of work I do now. The first was co-devising and performing in a play called Courage which was about oppression and which opened the week after 9/11; the second was house managing a one-woman show Iraqi women called Nine Parts of Desire during the beginning of the second Iraq war. In both instances, I saw how powerful art could be as a vehicle for inspiring public conversation about the most pressing issues of our time. These experiences inspired me to pursue a Ph.D., and I now teach, think, and write full-time about how film and art attempt to change the ways in which we inhabit our world.