I am an Assistant Professor of English and Technical Communication at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T), researching at the intersection of technical communication and game studies.

I earned a PhD in Rhetoric and Composition from Purdue University, a Master of Technical Communication from Utah State University, as well as undergraduate degrees in history and professional and technical writing from USU. I worked as a technical communicator in industry before pursuing a doctorate. I’ve written and designed successful grants, proposals, inquiries, white papers, infographics, manuals, brochures, resumes, and presentations; I’ve worked as an editor, grant writer, department trainer, and business manager. These experiences have given me valuable perspective and insight into industry.

Gaming is a passion of mine. Years of questioning my place within gaming communities led to a robust research agenda exploring identity, peripherals, platforms, and community. I currently focus on the role game controllers play in reifying conceptions of who is welcome (and who isn’t) within game spaces. Game controllers are often a backburner conversation, sidelined due to hardware being a literal periphery to video game content. Their importance is understated, and my work seeks to address that.

My work has appeared in the Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, Digital Culture and Society, SIGDOC Conference Proceedings, as well as in edited collections such as Historiographies of Game Studies and The Ethics of Playing, Researching, and Teaching Games in the Writing Classroom. I’ve presented my research at regional and national conferences, including Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA), Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW), and Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS).