She received her MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society from the University of Minnesota. Her dissertation was titled Design for Living: German and Swedish Design in the Early Twentieth Century. She has a Fil.Lic. in art history from Lunds University in Sweden, where she focused on contemporary art and social consciousness, specifically in the work of Adrian Piper, David Hammons, and Glenn Ligon.