I am a craft and design historian specializing in the social history of sewn arts. My research focuses on the dynamics of craft and gender within a settler colonial context and, more broadly, American craft within an intersectional framework.

I have a PhD in decorative arts, design history, and material culture from the Bard Graduate Center, where my dissertation, entitled Patchwork Politics: Crafting Indigeneity and Settler Colonialism in South Florida, 1880-1980, considered the politics of the Indigenous production and settler reception of the sewn arts made by citizens of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians and the Seminole Tribe of Florida, including dress, dolls, and the distinctive bands of pieced fabric designs now called “patchwork.”

My research has been supported by the American Philosophical Society, Center for Craft, Decorative Arts Trust, Hagley Museum and Library, and Smithsonian American Art Museum, among others. I have published in anthologies and journals such as the Journal of Modern of Craft, Collections, and Museum Worlds.

I am currently a Lecturer in the department of Theory and History of Art and Design at the Rhode Island School of Design and am researching and writing  on community-made quilts in the US Bicentennial era.