Research

My research follows belonging across two fields. In literature, I study what love costs characters who are refused a place in the social order. In psychology and education, I study how students decide to read, learn, and use new tools, and how belonging contributes to moral development.

Literature and queer theory

Exhausted Love: Queer Depletion in James Baldwin’s Another Country (Honors thesis, 2026; advised by Dr. Sara Marcus)

The thesis develops queer depletion as a framework for reading intimacy in Another Country. Working with and against Leo Bersani, Lee Edelman, and Elizabeth Freeman, and with Frank B. Wilderson III’s account of antiblackness, I read love in the novel as an expenditure that draws down the self until nothing is left to spend. Rufus’s suicide organizes the rest of the book: Vivaldo, Ida, Eric, and Cass re-form around him and go on extracting from him after his death.

Archival research at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and Baldwin’s former residence was funded by the Franco Institute. I am now extending the framework to Giovanni’s Room and to my Beinecke findings, toward a journal article.

Education and developmental psychology

The School Story Lab (Lab Manager since January 2026; Research Assistant since August 2025; PI Dr. Susan D. Blum)

I oversee two studies. TL;DR (2025–27) pairs a survey of 61 college students with follow-up interviews on how students read and why many choose not to. Preliminary findings point to due dates and personal interest as the strongest pressures on reading decisions, and to students’ motivation not to read as the question the interviews now pursue.

Materiality, Embodiment, and Education (2026–27) asks why students are returning to analog tools in the age of AI. Interviews cover the devices, materials, and note-taking and reading practices students bring to their coursework.

Moral psychology

With Daniel Lapsley, I am writing two entries for the Elgar Encyclopedia of Moral Psychology: “Belonging and Moral Formation,” which I lead, and “Distributive Justice Reasoning.” Both are forthcoming in 2028.

Student motivation and generative AI (capstone, Institute for Educational Initiatives; advised by Dr. Matthew Wilsey)

This interview and survey project asked why students choose, or decline, to use generative AI for coursework, with attention to their mindsets and motives. Most early writing on AI in education left the student’s own account out.