Areas of Expertise: 
Visual culture studies, critical pedagogy, teacher education, aesthetics, Bakhtin’s philosophy of communication (dialogism), art practices informed by new media, science, and technology, contemporary Latin America art, indigenous philosophies, qualitative and post-qualitative methodologies, and critical theory including postcolonial, queer, and feminist theory.

Bio: I earned a dual Ph.D. in Art Education and Women’s Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. My dissertation, Dialogic Encounters: The School of Panamerican Unrest investigates the pedagogical function of contemporary art. I was the recipient of the Penn State University Alumni Association Dissertation Award in the Fine Arts and Humanities Category. This is a prestigious award that is highly competitive with nominations from all colleges at Penn State.
Prior to my appointment at UNT, I was a Visiting Assistant Professor at The Ohio State University-Autumn 2011-Spring 2012. I hold PK-12 teacher licensure in art, and specialization in secondary education. I taught Advance Placement Art History and studio classes (drawing, photography, ceramics) at the high school level, and my students participated in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program in the visual arts (studio).

I teach courses in visual culture and pedagogy, secondary methods for pre-service art educators, critical pedagogy, global aesthetics, contemporary Latin American art, and critical theory. My teaching is centered on inquiry-based approaches to learning, visual studies education, socially responsible teaching, and transnational and cultural education. In 2013, I was a visiting professor in The Graduate Program in Computers in Education-PPGIE at the Universidad Federal Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil, where I taught a special topic graduate and undergraduate seminar: Routes of Global Exchange: Contemporary Art at the Intersection of Culture, Pedagogy and Technology. 


I am the author of numerous scholarly articles on dialogic pedagogy, visual culture studies, and feminist epistemology, featured in journals such as Studies in Art Education, The International Journal of Education through Art (IJETA), The Journal of Social Theory in Art Education (JSTAE), and Visual Culture and Gender (VCG). I have contributed essays to El Museo del Barrio in New York, and also authored book chapters on contemporary art and theory and indigenous knowledge(s), such as Revolution/Institution, Public Art and Answerability, a bilingual (English/Spanish) anthology about participatory art practices across the Americas, and “Transformations: The Performativity of Being Contemporary and Indigenous, the Aesthetic and Pedagogical Impulses in the Work of Virgil Ortiz” (2017), in K. Staikidis & C. Ballengee-Morri (Eds.). Transforming our Practices: Indigenous Art, Pedagogies, and Philosophies, respectively.

I have given numerous presentations at state and national conferences, including meetings of the Texas Art Education Association (TAEA), the National Art Education Association (NAEA), and International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI), and international conferences including the International Society of Education through Art (InSEA) in Portugal, Turkey, and Australia, and at the World Alliance for Art Education (WAAE) in Germany. She is an editorial board member of Trends in Art Education, The Journal of Social Theory in Art Education, and Visual Culture and Gender.