Biography
I am a historian of computing and politics in the United States. My current book project, Computing the Crisis: Information, Race, and Urban Politics in the Postwar U.S., traces how computing was imagined and deployed as a solution to the “urban crisis” from the 1960s onward. Following the efforts of government officials, civil rights activists, and business leaders to use computational techniques to manage and resolve persistent racial and economic inequalities in America’s cities, Computing the Crisis shows how framing these issues as technical problems transformed racial politics and policy — shifting the focus from structural injustice toward data-centric solutions that treated inequality as a matter of information and management. My broader research explores related topics in contemporary digital media, surveillance capitalism, and the radical politics of technology.
In the Film and Media Studies Department, I teach courses such as Software and Society and Technology and Labor, as well as graduate seminars on the history of computing, and media historiography. I am particularly interested in working with graduate students on topics related to media, science, and technology; media historiography; and theories of capitalism and state power.
My work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Jefferson Scholars Foundation, among others.