I am the Fannie Gaston-Johansson Assistant Professor of Latinx Studies in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Johns Hopkins University, where I specialize in Latinx and multiethnic literature. I am also affiliated faculty in the Program in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies (LACLxS).

My first book, Doom Patterns: Latinx Speculations and the Aesthetics of Violence is forthcoming with Duke University Press. In it, I examine how portrayals of destruction paradoxically foreground pleasure in humor, narrative beauty, and the grotesque. I argue that through literary devices I call “doom patterns” (devices such as thematic repetition, non-linear narration, character fragmentation, and unresolved plots), readers are consistently returned to instances of destruction and historical violence.

In service to the profession, I am the 2nd Vice President of the Motherboard of the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP), was a member of the founding executive committee for the Latina and Latino Literature forum of the Modern Language Association, have served as co-chair of the Latinx section of the Latin American Studies Association, and serve on the editorial board of Label Me Latina/o and Palgrave’s SFF: A New Canon series. I am also the recipient of a six-month Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Institute for Citizens and Scholars.

My research in speculative fiction extends to the digital stage, where I am the creator and curator of The Zombie Archive. This is an archival resource for lovers of the zombie figure as well as zombie scholars, in which they can find various sources that center around how the zombie functions in our cultural imaginary as a source of anxiety and fascination. A resource for literature, film, art, cultural events, and scholarly sources surrounding the zombie in all its manifestations.