“From Censors to Shouts: Ecologies of Abortion in American Fiction” traces the literary history of herbal abortifacients from abortion’s censorship and criminalization in the nineteenth century to present-day movements to reclaim or “shout” one’s abortion. I consider how the fictional mentions of plants known to be abortifacients demonstrate how literature can communicate reproductive and plant knowledge. I apply a plant humanities approach to literary studies in order to bridge the environmental and medical humanities from the perspective of reproductive justice, with herbal abortion at its center.

“From Censors to Shouts” was awarded the 2024 Carl Bode Dissertation Prize, given to a graduate student in English at the University of Maryland for the best dissertation in American literature.

I am in the process of revising the dissertation for publication as a book, tentatively titled Plants Before and Beyond Roe: Ecologies of Abortion in American Fiction.

“Cultivating Access, Cultivating Ignorance: A Survey of Herbal Abortifacients in American Fiction.” The Palgrave Handbook of Reproductive Justice and Literature, eds. Beth Widmaier Capo and Laura Lazzari. Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.

Tamarind. Co-authored with Allison Fulton and Amara Santiesteban Serrano. Dumbarton Oaks, Plant Humanities, 2022. Excerpt featured on The Recipes Project, 26 May 2022.

“The Ghosts of Emily Dickinson: Hauntings in Popular Culture.” Co-edited with Elizabeth Dinneny. Dickinson Electronic Archives, 10 December 2021.

“A View from the Vault: The Floating Bear Newsletter.” UD Library, Museums and Press News. 10 April, 2024.

“Introduction” with co-editors Jena DiMaggio and Margaret Ronda, ““Abortion Now, Abortion Forever”: Abortion Storytelling” Cluster, Post45 Contemporaries, June 2023.

“Grow Abortion Power: Herbal Abortifacients & Abortion Storytelling.” In “Abortion Now, Abortion Forever”: Abortion Storytelling Cluster, Post45 Contemporaries, June 2023.

“Phantom Records: A Two Part Series on Searchability and Records in Chronicling America” NEH Blog, Part 1, 24 August 2021; Part 2, 31 August 2021.

“Staging the Politics and Popular Appeal of “Pale Horse, Pale Rider.” UMD Special Collections & University Archives Blog. 14 November 2019.

“What a History”: Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider at 80.” UMD Special Collections & University Archives Blog. 13 August 2019.

“Katherine Anne Porter Correspondence Project: An Introduction.” UMD Special Collections & University Archives Blog. 25 February 2019.

My invited review of Dana Medoro’s Certain Concealments: Poe, Hawthorne, and Nineteenth-Century Abortion was recently published in the December 2023 of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Review.