I study early modern poetry and drama, particularly in terms of the religious currents in which these texts were read and performed. My current work explores the interplay between devotion and desire in seventeenth century lyric expressions. I did my undergraduate work at the University of Chicago in classical studies and English literature, and completed a masters dissertation at Balliol College, Oxford on the ways performed prayer intensifies erotic experience in Shakespeare's Sonnets.

Before coming to Harvard, I worked as a human rights advocate and spent time living in Accra, Ghana conducting research on the city's underground LGBT rights movements.