Hello! I am an Assistant Professor of Media and Technology Studies in Clemson University’s Department of Communication. I advise students in our terminal Masters in Communication, and I direct the Collaborative on Communication and Culture–a research space which produces the Culture Critically blog and podcast.
My research explores how media technologies act as knowledge machines, the processes by which they produce knowledge about individuals or social groups, and the cultural and political impacts of this knowledge production. My work straddles media studies, cultural studies, science/technology studies, and communication. I primarily utilize discourse analysis, interpretive methodologies, and critical theory to trace the cultural politics of a variety of objects, practices, and ideas. My use of critical hermeneutics contextualizes the imaginaries surrounding technical devices and systems within broader historical-social formations.
I am currently finishing a book manuscript, tentatively titled Bringers of Order: How Wearable Technologies Produce Knowledge and Datafy Daily Life, which explores how wearable technologies have been promised to serve as a democratizing force in accessibility, infrastructure, policing, healthcare, sport, and labor, but their implementation has routinely reproduced and exacerbated existing modes of power through practices like data-based surveillance.
You can consult my Curriculum Vita for a full list of my articles. My other major publications include the anthologies Superhero Synergies: Comic Book Characters Go Digital (co-edited with Matthias Stork, 2014), Orson Welles in Focus: Texts and Contexts (co-edited with Sidney Gottlieb, 2018), and a special double issue of Cultural Studies themed around infrastructural politics (co-edited with Blake Hallinan, 2021).