Prior to this appointment, she held a dual appointment at AASU as Instructor of English and First-Year Experience. She completed her PhD in English at Michigan State University. Her dissertation, Postcards from the Edge-City: Mass-Media and Photographic Images in Literature and Film of the Black Diaspora, examines the use of visual culture in contemporary African, Caribbean, and African-American literature and film. She has held several distinguished fellowships, including the Arthur J. Mitchem Dissertation and Teaching Fellowship at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.