She previously taught at Southern University in New Orleans and moved to Virginia after Hurricane Katrina and the levee break. Her fields of specialization are women’s memoir and environmental humanities. She is the founder and editor of the bi-annual journal NOLA DIASPORA, www.noladiaspora.org, and is currently completing a monograph, Sustainable Selves: Women’s Memoir of the Twentieth Century. She also serves as a principal investigator for “Imagining Sustainable Environments: Place and Culture in the Global Community," a collaboration between Virginia State University's Dr. George H. Bennett Office for International Education and the department of languages and literature.