I am Professor of Rhetoric and Composition in the English Department at Chapman University; I am also affiliated with the University Honors Program and the First-Year Foundations program. I grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa, where I completed my B.A. and B.A. Honours degrees at the University of the Witwatersrand. I earned my M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in the US, at San Diego State University and the University of California, San Diego, respectively. Now I live in downtown Los Angeles, one of the most wonderfully cosmopolitan cities in the world!

My primary areas of research and teaching are rhetoric and composition, and queer studies; in addition, I have interests in critical theory, film, feminist theory, cultural studies, critical race studies, and African literature. I'm the author of three monographs: Queer Race: Cultural Interventions in the Racial Politics of Queer Theory (Peter Lang, 2004); Upsetting Composition Commonplaces (Utah State UP, 2014); and Sex Panic Rhetorics, Queer Interventions (U of Alabama P, 2020), winner of the 2021 Lavender Rhetorics Book Award for Excellence in Queer Scholarship from the Conference on College Composition and Communication. And I am co-editor of the open access anthology Trigger Warnings: Teaching Through Trauma (Lever Press, 2026). Prior to coming to Chapman, I was Professor of English at California State University, Northridge, where I taught for ten years, serving for two of those years as Chair of the University Writing Council. I have also previously held positions at USC, California State University Chico, and The Ohio State University.

For my current office hours and a complete list of my publications, as well as syllabi for courses I have taught at Chapman, please visit my website.