general bio
I joined the MIT Philosophy department in July 2021. From 2019 to 2021, I was the inaugural Desai Family Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer in the Princeton Philosophy Department. Before Princeton, I was at Yale, where I earned my PhD (2019) in three years from the Philosophy Department.
I am a late convert to philosophy. Before Yale, I was at Harvard, where I earned a BA (2014) and MA (2016) from the English Department.
Before that, I attended convent school in New Jersey. I still have some very unimpressive Church Latin.
interests in english.
I earned my BA ’14 and MA ’16 from the Harvard English Department. I specialized in Old English literature, and Beowulf still occupies an important place in my heart. I saw this guy live. I also wandered through much of the Old Norse-Icelandic corpus. Ask me about the Family Sagas. Like many former English literature majors, I still cherish Shakespeare’s tragedies, John Keats’ poems, and Slaughterhouse Five.
Once upon a time, I published some embarrassing Old English-inspired poems.
conversion experience.
Many people ask me how I became a philosopher. It was an accident. During my senior spring, I needed a fourth elective. I wanted to take intermediate reading Latin, but my boyfriend (a philosopher) dragged me into a philosophy of language course (taught by this guy) instead. I wept when I read the modal argument in Naming and Necessity, because I found it very beautiful. After that, I became obsessed with the philosophy of language. I couldn’t stop reading about it. Eventually I realized that I no longer wanted to be a student of literature–I wanted to become a philosopher.
After a brief stint as an English PhD student, and an even briefer stint as a joint English and Philosophy PhD student at Harvard, I transferred to the PhD program in Philosophy at Yale.