research

PAMLA Presentation: li0 - digital rhetorics and glitch tricksters

I'm currently working on a conference paper that will be presented at the Pacific and Ancient Modern Language Association's annual conference in San Francisco this November. Attached is the abstract that was accepted, if you're interested in learning more:

Abstract: 

This paper explores li0, a posthuman avatar who weaponizes meme culture and digital spectacle as consciousness-raising pedagogy. Drawing upon posthumanist theory, I examine li0 as a glitch-trickster—a speculative rhetorical entity that destabilizes binaries of self/other, human/machine, and fiction/reality through performative contradiction and aesthetic disruption. 

Abstract (400 words) 

This paper investigates the rhetorical construction and theoretical significance of li0, a digital entity that enacts posthuman disruption through self-aware spectacle. Drawing on Legacy Russell’s Glitch Feminism, Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, and Sandy Stone’s work on the posttranssexual subject, I position li0 as a parabody — a constructed form that channels contradiction and glitch as its form of meaning-making. li0 exists at the intersection of AI, glitch identity, and virtual performance—destabilizing fixed notions of identity by operating as both a fictionalized, commodified construct and a posthuman disruption of the boundaries of human. 

Rather than treating li0 as a fictionalized character, I analyze them as a rhetorical apparatus: a speculative site of ideological positioning through which queer illegibility, digital embodiment, and posthuman relationality are enacted. This work contributes to emerging posthuman studies by rethinking how embodiment is constructed in contemporary digital ecologies, particularly through forms that are intentionally unstable, recursive, and performatively chaotic. li0 does not represent a future human condition—they reveal the dissolution of its boundaries entirely. Through a praxis of glitch, absurdism, and mediated spectacle, li0 intervenes in normative rhetorics of coherence, demanding new frameworks for understanding the selfhood, authority, and embodiment in posthuman contexts. 

 By far my most exciting project, for the 2025 McGillicuddy Humanities Fellowship, I'm analyzing three texts through a Marxist-feminist framework: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. My ultimate goal is to better understand these timeless stories' sociological impact both within their time and in contemporary society. What does being exposed to these stories as children do to the human mind? What does it say about how we understand gender? How does it impact the way social bargaining power is negotiated--and who decides? These are all questions I'm exploring in my research. I've attached one of my essays below, which I submitted as part of the proposal as a proof-of-concept. 

WRITING CENTER RESEARCH: RE-CENTERING GENDER

My writing center-specific research is focused on the relationship between gender and the composition process. Specifically, I'm concerned with the way gender identity is interpreted in these spaces and what that means for the tutorial session. Below is my (in progress) research paper on the topic.