Areas of expertise:

  • Burlesque

  • Ballet

  • Yoga

  • Dance history

  • Dance in American popular culture

  • Feminist & queer theories

Conference Presentations

2025 “We’re All a Little Gay!”: Queer Histories and Futurity in the “Van Ella Bordella” Burlesque Show.” American Society for Theatre Research.

2025 “Archives Unveiled: A Journey Through the Real History of Burlesque.” OSU Special Collection Symposium.

2025 “Nox Falls and Foxy Noxy: Sampling and Remixing in Neo-Burlesque Performance.” Popular Culture Association 

2024 “Brothels and Burlesque: Race, Queerness, and Feminist Politics in the New Orleans "Van Ella Bordella” Burlesque Show.” National Women’s Studies Association 

2024 “Chaotic Good Time: Fantasy, Feminism, and Queerness in Nerdlesque Performance.” Popular Culture Association 

2023 “Legs and Eggs: New Orleans Burlesque Brunch.” National Women’s Studies Association 

2023 “Rebel Queen: Star Wars Nerdlesque as Embodied Fan Fiction.” Popular Culture Association 

2023 “Queer Glitter Magic: The Crescent City Burlesque Weekender Festival.” Women & Gender Studies South 

2022 “Who Is That Girl I See? Ariana Amour’s Burlesque “Reflection.” National Women’s Studies Association 

2022 “Ecstatic Spectacle: Oppositional Gaze and Hypervisibility in Perle Noire’s “Peacock Fantasy.” Dance Studies Association

2022 “Pole Tricks and Saving Stacks: “P-Valley” as a Workplace Drama.” Popular Culture Association

2021 “Queer Moves Through the Glass: The Allways Lounge Peep Show.”  Dance Studies Association 

2014 “Writing the New Burlesque.” Congress on Research in Dance/Society of Dance History Scholars 

Book reviews

‘Hold On to That Feeling’: Baker Rogers’s King of Hearts: Drag Kings in the American South.” Dance Chronicle 47 (3): 592-595 

Neo-Burlesque: Striptease as Transformation by Lynn Sally. Dance Research Journal 54 (2): 94–97. 

I am an interdisciplinary scholar whose research is grounded in dance studies, feminist and queer theories, pop culture studies, history, and regionality.

My research focus is neo-burlesque performance in the United States, particularly the American South, asking how performers navigate, disrupt, transgress, and undermine narratives of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy, creating spaces of agency, resistance, and queer world-making.