Assistant Professor, Applied Linguistics & Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

(Fall 2026)

This book project examines the limits and affordances of self-identification for nonbinary identity work, considering the subjectivity of the “they” that can rightly declare themselves as “they/them.” Bringing sociolinguistics, trans studies, and linguistic anthropology into conversation, Signaling Gender studies how language affects the socio-material world to construct an enduring nonbinary persona at the fringes of normative gender – but often at the expense of Black and other racialized queer communities. I am interested in how nonbinary is understood both within and outside of nonbinary communities, inquiring into how nonbinarity is perceived, the politics of who gets to be seen as nonbinary, and the roles of ideology and intersubjectivity in the construction of social meaning. Through analyses of social media posts, autoethnographic accounts, and ethnographic work with a multiracial group of nonbinary individuals, Signaling Gender develops an account of nonbinary identity that is at once receptive to the urge to define the queer self and critical of the social ramifications of self-determination as a political impetus.