Her teaching and research interests include environmental and social justice, ecocriticism, narrative, gender studies, cultural studies, empathy, service learning, and contemporary ethnic American literatures. She has taught courses in gender and popular culture, environmental justice, ethnic American literature, the politics of food, violence, and American Indian literature. Her dissertation, “Environmental Justice Metafiction,” looks at the intersection of self-conscious narrative forms and environmental inequalities in contemporary fiction by women of color. Recent publications include an article on Louise Erdrich’s fiction published in Studies in American Indian Literatures and an interview with writer Linda Hogan which appears in ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. In her spare time, she likes to play the washboard suit.