Faculty

My area of specialization is the cultural and social history of architecture in 19^th and 20^th century United States, with particular interest in the preservation of heritage places associated with marginalized people and their histories.

My current project book, “Black Church Edifices: An Architectural History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church” examines how cultural, economic, and political conditions affected the building culture of the AME Church in the United States. Focusing primarily on print culture produced by AME clergymen and members of the Black elite, I look to unearth how Black Church building embodied issues of class, identity, and respectability amongst the AMEs. In this work, I situate AME building culture within the social and cultural history of Black identity in the United States, emphasizing racialized minorities as agents reacting to their own material conditions. This work explores Protestant architectural trends in several key AME Church building projects and AME print culture centered on expanding the church, while also challenging racist assumptions about Black people through building and design.

I am an active member in the architectural field, having served on the board of the Society of Architectural Historians as the chair of the Graduate Student Advisory Committee from 2023 – 2025.  My work has been generously supported by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Society of Architectural Historians, the Vernacular Architecture Forum, the Historic American Building Survey, the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, the Mellon Scholars Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University, and the University of Pennsylvania as a predoctoral fellow at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design.