[1] She then attended Stanford, where she earned bachelor's and master's degrees in English literature.

She continued her education at the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned a master's degree and a Ph.D. in English literature.

She has written criticism of the 19th-century American authors Charles W. Chesnutt, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Elleanor Eldridge, Benjamin Franklin, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Walt Whitman.

Her critical essays and reviews have appeared in African American Review, Belles Lettres, Daedalus, Journal of American History, Libraries and Culture, Nineteenth Century Contexts and Whitman Noir.

She has received fellowships from the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), the Social Science Research Council and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.