Book

A Queer History of Adolescence: Developmental Pasts, Relational Futures. University of Georgia Press, 2020. A Queer History of Adolescence develops a critical, historical, and theoretical framework that brings together questions of queer theory and categories of age, tracking shifts in social conceptions of adolescence from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in order to reconceive notions of identity and relationality in the present.

Winner of the Children’s Literature Association Honor Book Award

Selected Publications

Edited Journal Issue

With Mary Zaborskis. Special Issue on Queer Texts for Youth in The Lion and the Unicorn 49.2 (2025). Forthcoming with essays by Katharine Slater, Gabriel Duckels, Isabel Millán, and Peter Marra, James Smith, and Rachel Dean-Ruzicka.

Peer Reviewed Articles

“Letting Go of Belonging: Reorienting the Human in Akwaeke Emezi’s Pet.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 49.4 (2025). 

“Impossible Relations, Ethical Relations: The Stakes of #OwnVoices Representation in LGBTQ Young Adult Fiction.” International Journal of Young Adult Literature 4.1 (2023): 1-21. https://ijyal. ac.uk/articles/10.24877/IJYAL.125.

“‘The Absurdities and Crudities of Adolescence’: Nineteenth Century Logics of Development and the Politics of Difference.” Nineteenth Century Studies 31 (2019): 15-33. 

“Adolescence, Blackness, and the Politics of Respectability in Monster and The Hate U Give.” Lion and the Unicorn 43.2 (2019): 236-260.

“Is the Trans Child a Queer Child? Constructing Normativity in Raising Ryland and I am Jazz.” Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture 1.1 (2016): 95-109.

“Toward a Theory of Adolescence: Queer Disruptions in Representations of Adolescent Reading.” Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 7.1 (2015): 110-134.

“Adolescence.” Transgender Studies Quarterly 1.1/2 (2014): 22-24.

“Queer Theory Wrestles the ‘Real’ Child: Impossibility, Identity, and Language in Jacqueline Rose’s The Case of Peter Pan.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 35.3 (2010): 255-273. 

Invited Book Chapters

“Theorising Adolescence.” Routledge Companion to Young Adult Literature. Eds. Gabriel Duckels, Peter Hunt, Jennifer Mooney, Keith O’Sullivan, and Cristina Rhodes. Under contract at Routledge.

“Queer Ontologies: Categories of Age Before Developmentalism.” The Biopolitics of Childhood in the Long American Nineteenth Century. Eds. Allison Giffen and Lucia Hodgson. Routledge, 2025. 

“Adolescence, Trans Phenomena and the Politics of Sexuality Education.” The Palgrave Handbook of Sexuality Education. Eds. Mary Lou Rasmussen and Louisa Allen. Palgrave MacMillan UK, 2017.

Recent Conference Presentations

“What is a Nazi: Techniques of Power Versus Ethical Relationality.” Children’s Literature Association Annual Conference. Virtual Conference, 2025.

“Our Children’s Trust: Shifting Conceptualizations of Child and Environment.” Modern Language Association Annual Meeting. New Orleans, LA, 2025. 

“Retheorizing Visibility: Practices of Ethical Relationality in Queer and Trans Young Adult Literature.” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Annual Meeting. Palm Springs, CA, 2024.

“Gender and Sexuality Ethics for Children at Drag Story Hour.” Modern Language Association Annual Meeting. Portland, OR, 2024. 

“Impossible Relations, Ethical Relations in #OwnVoices LGBTQ Young Adult Fiction.” Children’s Literature Association Annual Conference. University of Washington, Bellevue, WA, 2023.

“Categories of Age Before Developmentalism.” Modern Language Association Annual Meeting. San Francisco, 2023.

“The Stakes of #OwnVoices in LGBTQ Young Adult Novels.” YA Studies Association Conference. Virtual Conference, 2022.

“Freaks, Queers, and Sinners: Ethical Entanglement in Kate Bornstein’s Hello, Cruel World.” Children’s Literature Association Annual Conference. Atlanta, GA, 2022. 

“Young Adult Literature After the Subject: Making Knowledge in the Post-Truth Era.” Modern Language Association Annual Meeting. Washington, D.C., Virtual Conference, 2022. 

“How Developmentalism Redefined Childhood: Producing Difference Through Categories of Age.” American Studies Association Annual Meeting. Virtual Conference, 2021.

“Categories of Age and the Logic of Developmentalism.” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting. Virtual Conference, 2021.

“The Performativity of Childhood as Ethical Relationality.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention. Virtual Conference, 2021.

“Toward a Theory of the Human in #OwnVoices Trans Young Adult Literature.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention. Seattle, WA, 2020.

Courses regularly taught

Introduction to Children’s Literature

Introduction to Young Adult Literature

LGBTQ Literature & Film 

Queer Theory

Areas of Interest

Children's Literature and Culture

Young Adult Literature

Histories of Childhood and Adolescence

Queer Theory

Transgender Studies