I am a Professor of Media Studies and the Undergraduate Director of Middle Grades Education in the Department of Learning, Teaching, and Curriculum at Appalachian State University. My research interests focus on media production, identity, and media literacy practices in order to understand the intersections of the visual, the spoken, the written, and the performed in digital and print literacies. I have created an analytic methodology called multimodal microanalysis to understand the media products young people create, and her past scholarship focused on how to think through an ethics of youth media production, especially in marginalized groups. I currently teach courses for preservice and practicing teachers to learn how to integrate media and technology for teaching and learning. I also teach Media Studies students from across campus to learn how to analyze identities across media, such as race/gender/sexualities in streaming media and comics, and how to create their own media in response through games, blogs, audio documentary, and other media. My most recent project is a book entitled Literacy and Identity Through Streaming Media: Kids, Teens, and Representation on Netflix, published by Routledge in 2023. Recent projects also include anti-censorship and teachers in North Carolina and ways to teach in the current political climate.  

 

Academic Specialty:
Literacies, New Literacy Studies, Multimodality, New Media, Youth Media, Technologies and Learning

​

Education:
B.A., English/English Education, University of Wyoming
M.A., English--Literary Studies, University of Wyoming
Ph.D., Curriculum and Instruction--Literacies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

​