This portfolio brings together cultural analysis, academic research, published commentary, and developing inquiry across music, identity, political power, education, public institutions, housing, and material culture. Each project examines the histories and structures surrounding a cultural question, then makes those connections legible to a wider audience.
The Awareness, Imagination, and Perpetuation of Violence
This essay examines "Chiraq" as more than a metaphor. Through comparative cultural analysis, it connects the lived realities of violence in Chicago and Iraq to shared capitalist, colonial, and carceral mechanisms of control.
View ProjectRatchet Feminism and Respectability Politics in Black Women's Hip-Hop
This study examines how Black women rappers resist and reproduce respectability politics through lyrics about sexuality, public image, wealth, the body, family, mental health, and relationships with men.
View ProjectNew Chains examines hip-hop jewelry as more than decoration or proof of wealth, considering how chains function as visual branding and symbols of ownership, freedom, excess, and self-definition.
View ProjectIdentity, Belonging, and Cultural Performance in the MENA Diaspora
This essay examines how members of the MENA diaspora construct and perform identity across cultural environments that demand recognition while resisting complexity.
View ProjectA Palestine Case Study
This commentary examines the destruction and restriction of Palestinian education as a mechanism of displacement, cultural erasure, and political control.
View ProjectThis commentary examines what New York City's budget priorities reveal about the relationship between policing, education, and public life.
View ProjectThis commentary examines student housing insecurity as a structural barrier to education, through institutional critique and personal testimony.
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