I’m a writer with a religious studies Ph.D. who covers religion, higher education, gender, labor, motherhood, and popular culture. I’m an essayist, a historian, and a journalist. I’ve written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Rumpus, Religion & Politics, Christian Century, Washington Post, Women in Higher Education (WIHE), The Chronicle of Higher Education, Killing the Buddha, Sacred Matters, and Brain, Child. (My full portfolio of clips is available here.) I won an APEX Award of Excellence (2017) for my WIHE column and an APEX Grand Award for Writing (2021) for a series of columns on motherhood and pandemic for WIHE.
I’m also an award-winning and bestselling author. My books include the Choice Outstanding Academic Title Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930 ( 2011); Grace Period: A Memoir in Pieces (2017) named one of the Best Books in New Religion Journalism of the Decade by Religion Dispatches; the INDIE Gold award-winner Sexism Ed: Essays on Gender and Labor in Academia (2018); 2021 Gold Medal Winner from the Florida Authors and Publishers Association (FAPA) President’s Book Awards The Zombies Are Coming: The Realities of the Zombie Apocalypse in American Culture (2020), and Final Girl: And Other Essays on Grief, Trauma, and Mental Illness (2020). Additionally, Joseph Fruscione and I co-edited Succeeding Outside of the Academy: Career Paths beyond the Humanities, Social Sciences, and STEM (2018).
I’m the former editor of Women in Higher Education, a feminist newsletter, and The National Teaching and Learning Forum. Previously, I was also the managing editor of Disability Acts, an all volunteer magazine for disability essays, screeds, and manifestos by disabled people for all people.
My PhD (2008) is in American religious history from Florida State University‘s department of Religion. My scholarship encompasses a variety of topics including religion and popular culture, white supremacy, white Christian nationalism, apocalypticism, religion and gender, monsters, and horror. I’ve taught courses on these topics at Florida State University, University of New Mexico and University of Tennessee. For those of you who are academically inclined, here’s my CV.
When I’m not writing assignments, editing, wrangling two children and four cats, or looking out for alligators and other Florida fauna, I’m working my way through a collection of essays about endings and other apocalypses and a book on pandemic motherhood.