I write about queer sexuality and gender, politics, and theater. I have published essays and articles with Howlround, America Magazine, Religion Dispatches, and Broadly Textual.

Theater

“Something for Everybody: Radical Inclusion in a Modern Adaptation”, Howlround_, 20 February 2020.
“As the Usher tells the audience: the idea that these actors are, in their own bodies and identities, each equally suited to all of the many different roles ‘destabilize[s] your preconceived notions about identity.’.” (Photo by DJ Corey, courtesy of Shakespeare Theatre Company)

Unmanly Grief: Performing A Trans Hamlet, Howlround, 10 September 2019.
“It’s a queer actor’s—and audience’s—dream: to be treated as unremarkable; to have one’s experiences represented as they are without patronizing repackaging for unfamiliar audiences.” (Image courtesy of Iris Theatre)

Religion and Spirituality

World Meeting of Families again positions queer Catholics as children, Religion Dispatches, 28 August 2018.
“Like an abusive parent, the Catholic Church dismisses our real needs and our holy talents until they seem irrelevant, all while reinforcing its own authority.”

Fasting, fat shaming and finding Christ in my body, America Magazine, 7 February 2018.
“People like me have unconsciously learned to hate the bodies God created because they do not meet the standard created by society.”

How I misplaced my faith, Broadly Textual, 6 October 2018.
“I left it in the run-down Amtrak station in Schenectady, New York: a tiny room with a manual train schedule, a contaminated drinking fountain, and an air freshener that whined every quarter hour.”

Asexuality

Asexuality as difference, Broadly Textual, November 2017.
“The problem with asexuality, as I’ve discussed before, is that it is hard to talk about on its own terms — even in a grammatical sense. But what if that weren’t the case?”
Misrepresenting Difference: Objectifying Asexuality in Journalism
Abnormalizing Difference: Sexual Normativity in Asexual Sherlock Fanfic
Normalizing Difference: Redefining Asexuality
Valuing Difference: An Ace on Food, Friendship, and Fluffy Companionship

Queer History

A History of LGBT History, Broadly Textual, October 2014.
“Over the next few weeks, I will look at how we ‘do’ LGBT and queer histories from a literary perspective: what it means to (re)construct a queer history, and the advantages and pitfalls of identifying queer figures in literary history.”
A History of LGBT History
Recuperation as Resistance: The Icons of LGBT History
Overwriting History: “Just Reading” and the Case of John Henry Newman
Queering LGBT History: The Case of Sherlock Holmes Fanfic
Coda: Asexual Awareness Week and the Future of Queer Theory

Early-modern Catholicism

Theater and Conversion, Broadly Textual, January 2017.
“Anyone that could play the turncoat once was presumed to be inclined to do it again. One never fully shook their former identity.”
Un/natural Citizens: Naturalization and Conversion
Persuasive Performance: Theater and Conversion
Legalizing Repression: “Muslim Registries” and English Recusants
Coda: Converting Art — Literature During Political Repression