My research primarily focuses on ideas of narration and representation of the American small-town in the first half of the twentieth century, particularly during the interwar period. From Sherwood Anderson's melancholic Midwestern towns, Norman Rockwell's nostalgic renderings of New England, to Willa Cather's Plains novels, I am interested in how the small-town model varies across America's vast topography and why community ideologies continue to prevail in the American consciousness.
My work is transmedial and looks at the legacy of American photography alongside literature, particularly the work of the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s, as well as wider American art. I aim to question why small-town America continues to enjoy such prolific representation in American media through exploration of its narratorial origins in the early-to-mid twentieth century.
Other research interests include domestic narratives, Americana and its attendant literature and artwork, image-building and mythmaking in American cinema, psychogeography, regionalist literature, and women's narratives of the American frontier.