She holds a BM degree from Prairie View A&M University, a MM degree from Rice University, and a PhD from Cornell University. Her primary research area is nineteenth-century French ballet and her doctoral dissertation, Adolphe Adam’s Ballet Le Corsaire at the Paris Opéra, 1856-1868: A Source Study, examines the composer’s last ballet during its run at Paris’ foremost theater through surviving archival documents. She has presented her work at both national and international conferences. She is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the American Musicological Society’s M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet Fund for Research in France. Outside of nineteenth-century France, she works on popular music, particularly the history of rhythm and blues, and the genre of funk, and their influence on hip-hop.