Doctoral Student

I’m a third-year doctoral student, and am broadly interested in relationships between white supremacy, nationalism, collective memory, narratives, and emotions. My research is focused on narrative productions of meaning and their material and political consequences. Particularly, I am interested in studying historical preservation and collective remembering with the goal of identifying hegemonic reproductions of white supremacy and nationalism. I pay special attention to how these reproductions reflect or deviate from broader cultural narratives related to race and nation. My Master’s thesis, completed at the University of South Florida, examines narratives surrounding Confederate monument removal published in a Southern newspaper. In this project, I analyze similar reproductions of white supremacist and nationalist logics across the supposed political divide of the Confederate monument removal debate, and work to complicate the liberal/conservative binary which often defines this debate in popular discourse. I also identify the rhetorical strategies used to obscure links between the moral and emotional justifications for or against Confederate monument removal and wider systems of racism and U.S. nationalism.