She earned her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in African Diaspora Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including the UC Berkeley Regents Intern Fellowship and Dean’s Normative Time Fellowship, the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship, and The Penn State Africana Research Center Postdoctoral Fellowship. Her research interests include images of black female sexuality, black visuality, and pornography. Her publications appear in Camera Obscura and The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure (The Feminist Press). She is currently working on a manuscript exploring black women, BDSM, and pornography. Her teaching at Penn State includes classes on feminist visual culture, racialized sexuality, and representations of race, gender, and sexuality.