I am a media historian and theorist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Dartmouth Society of Fellows and a 2024-2025 ACLS Fellow. My research focuses on the ways visual evidence has been understood and deployed.

My book manuscript, Contested Vision: Race and the Limits of Visual Evidence argues the controversial status of photographic images as evidence from Rodney King to George Floyd is not a product of the so-called “digital turn,” but rather stems from a much older distrust of non-white voices and denigration of human interpretation in favor of data analysis. Examining the use of visual evidence in key trials from the late 19th century to the present, Contested Vision reveals how the camera’s application in policing and the courts has consistently enabled the unjust treatment of people of color under a guise of objectivity.

My work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Film Quarterly, and the New Review of Film and Television Studies. I have been supported by grants from ACLS, the California State Library, UC Humanities Research Institute, Berkeley Center for New Media, the Center for Japanese Studies, and the UC Berkeley Graduate Division. I am also a filmmaker, newly a wet-plate photographer, and formerly an editor of documentary films.

I received a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in Film and Media Studies with a Designated Emphasis in New Media and a B.A. from Yale University in Film Studies.

I welcome ideas for collaboration. You can contact me here.