Research Interests

Feminist and Queer Theology

Rural Education

LGBT Families

Curriculum Theory

Please note: I realize that even the following definition is complicated, but then again, so, I have found, is curriculum theory. Curriculum theory is inquiry that seeks to understand curriculum across academic disciplines, aspires to understand the overall educational significance of the curriculum, focusing especially on interdisciplinary themes as well as the relations among curriculum, the individual, and the self. Curriculum theory examines the "complicated conversation" (Pinar 1996) of curriculum by examining its nature as historical, political, racial, gendered, phenomenological, poststructuralist, postmodern, autobiographical, aesthetic, and theological text.

Curriculum Studies of Place & Pedagogies of Place

These are areas in which I hope to make a contribution to curriculum and pedagogical studies. My work on place, autobiographical work that examines the raced, classed, gendered, sexualized, and religious nature of the self-in-place, promotes the consideration of identity in the social environment we live in. It is interdisciplinary and wrestles with understanding identity and interpreting lived experiences. How are these concepts related to curriculum and pedagogy? In several ways I think; on one very important level to us as teachers, we may acknowledge school and classroom cultures that are impacted by teachers, as well as students' lived experiences. My work looks at the self, contextualized, and the interrelationship of that contextualized self to those with whom it co-exists.

Southern Studies

I once made the statement that I love the South, and was instantly asked, "Why?" That, in part, prompted me to begin studying everything from scholarly works to light non-fiction to journalistic accounts of Southern history and culture. John Shelton Reed's sociological work is particularly comprehensive. I love his, 1001 Things Everyone Should Know about the South (1996). It's a good starting place, covering everything from Martin Luther King to Moon Pies. I am a product of the South, its culture, people, society, history, and I still choose to be here and examine the South as place and myself as self-in-place.