Research Statement

My research interests encompass the areas of race, culture, and crime. More specifically, I explore how the prevailing social order, represented through society’s economic organization, political institutions, and cultural beliefs shape collective perception of social inequality and violence—particularly with regards to its perpetrators. I employ several methods to explore these concepts, but my research can generally be described as ethnographic and historical, one informing the other. As my work demonstrates, I am interested in how we legitimize the violence done by one group—be it subjective or systemic—at the expense of another.

My master’s thesis provides my foundation, which I flesh out further in a journal article that explores the legitimation of acts of vigilante violence. In this project, I focus on the August 2020 Kenosha, Wisconsin shooting perpetrated by Kyle Rittenhouse. To understand this event, I draw on the frontier myth, the thin blue line, and the cultural construction of the vigilante. I find that, despite many public figures’ condemnation of Rittenhouse, there are just as many who defend him as a “good kid” from his legal team to internet and mainstream media figures. This is primarily because his defense rests on ideas central to American capitalism like private property and security, both of which have roots in foundational western ideas of the frontier, thin blue line, vigilante, and antihero. I argue that Rittenhouse is not an exception but rather the rule when it comes to acts of violence. Throughout history, violence is justified against the marginalized, their representatives, or those who live on the fringes of the American social order as a direct result of these foundational ideas.

My dissertation takes a historically rooted approach to explore the ongoing urban revitalization project in Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Black Wall Street. For this project, I am interested in how the past persists, or rather is drug into the present and how it impacts both district and community. I draw on gentrification and dark tourism literature to make sense of how the city of Tulsa intends to commodify the violent atrocity that took place in 1921, known as the Tulsa Race Massacre. I use historically informed ethnography to analyze how the city’s extensive use of the race massacre and Black Wall Street moniker impacts the district’s identity, carries material consequences for longtime residents, and displaces locals and unhoused individuals alike. My research in Tulsa carries implications for other cities’ gentrification projects and brings its intersection with dark tourism into clear view. I am writing the dissertation with a book in mind and hope to secure a contract in my first year of post-graduate employment. My first dissertation chapter is also nearly complete, and I aim to publish an article from it in the spring.

I am also developing other projects rooted in my core research areas. The first explores rising contemporary physiognomic practices on social media, specifically those conducted by users on the platform X. I am also working on a project that explores the presence of border militias along the US-Mexico border through the frontier lens. Both projects continue to build on my foundational interests. I aim to develop more projects in this vein in the form of monographs, articles, and book chapters in the future.