I am an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University, with secondary appointments in Asian American and Diaspora Studies and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies.

I am interested in the politics of medicine in the United States—in particular, in what chronically ill and disabled people have to do when medical, state, and bureaucratic systems fail them.

My first book is Sick Work: Exhaustion, Labor, and Invisible Illness (Duke University Press, September 2026). It looks at myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME/CFS—a disease defined by disproportionate exhaustion after any form of exertion, which has no cure or treatment—in the US. I argue that it takes work to be ill. Changing formations of labor create the prerequisite for how illness and health are defined, particularly in the context of capitalism, which runs on energy. When bureaucratic systems fail, they require chronically ill people to do their own labor of living, or what I call “sick work,” in the absence of other forms of support.

Current research is on the multiple politics of “alternative medicine” in the US. Presently, I am looking at AIDS activists’ relationships to alternative medicine in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when treatment options were profoundly constrained. I am also interested in the historical, racial, and regulatory factors that uphold “alternative medicine” as a coherent and legible category—or not.

I am interdisciplinarily trained with degrees from Sarah Lawrence College (BA) and New York University (PhD, American Studies).

I live in Durham, NC and Brooklyn, NY with my Miniature Schnauzer, Frankie.

*A note to prospective graduate students: There is no need to reach out to promote your project, send materials, or inquire about my availability as an advisor or committee member. Discussing applications with students in advance biases the process, often replicating class and linguistic inequalities and leading to favoritism. It is my policy to ignore these emails out of fairness to all applicants. If you have specific questions about the application process or program, the appropriate contact can be found on the department's website.