She is a native of Chicago and before moving to North Carolina, she received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 2011. Her fields of research and teaching interests are 20th- and 21st-century literature, film, music, (post)subculture studies, multiculturalism, African Diaspora studies and gender studies. She is the author of several essays about German film, Turkish German literature, popular music and counterculture in Germany. In her free time she enjoys live music, traveling with her husband and son, and collecting punk records.