Research
Double Bind ‘Splaining (under review, draft upon request)
In this paper, I offer an account of “double bind ‘splaining,” a particularly pernicious form of mansplaining in which speakers from non-dominant positions are trapped between either accepting an epistemic undermining of their standing as a knower or violating conversational norms in ways that render them illocutionarily silenced. I argue that this hybrid epistemic-linguistic form of mansplaining exploits conversational rules to sustain harm, making it especially resistant to redress. This framework also provides a foothold for understanding how such harms can be resisted locally, even within broader contexts of social stratification.
“Obstacles to Empathetic Listening After Sexual Violence” (Hypatia, 2024, co-authored with Dr. Amy McKiernan)
In this paper, we examine the importance of empathetic listening in the aftermath of sexual violence. Drawing on Linda Martín Alcoff’s concept of subversive speech, Lori Gruen’s theory of entangled empathy, and Susan Brison’s work on self-reconstruction after trauma, we argue that common interpretive frameworks—legal, medical, academic, or diagnostic—can overextend, reducing survivor testimony to institutional categories and obstructing processes of self-reconstruction. We introduce the concept of subversive listening as a counter-practice that resists dominant frameworks, remaining attentive to the specificity, ambiguity, and emotional force of survivor speech, and illustrate this approach through a close reading of V’s The Apology (2019).
The Language of Repair (in progress)
In this paper, I draw on recent work in pragmatics to further our understanding of language’s role in moral repair, particularly within interpersonal relationships. While Austinian speech act theory has been widely used to model forgiveness (e.g., in the work of Glen Pettigrove and Brandon Warmke), I argue that it is ill-suited to capture forgiveness’s ongoing nature: it makes unforgiveness difficult to interpret, obscures the possibility of discussing past harm without undermining repair, and backgrounds the relational histories that help constitute a relationship. I propose an alternative pragmatic framework that emphasizes how conversational participants collaboratively establish and shift conversational norms over time. This framework broadens existing language-based approaches to understanding moral repair, frames forgiveness as a continuous, collaborative process rather than a discrete event, and offers a richer account of the dynamic nature and complexities of intimate relationships.
Epistemic Carelessness (in progress)
In this paper, I explore the tendency of both speakers and listeners to default to assumed shared epistemic policies—the rules and standards that govern how much credence a listener gives a belief, including evidential thresholds, justificatory standards, and resilience to counterevidence—which I call epistemic carelessness. I argue that in our current epistemic environment, characterized by an oversaturation of information, rapidly evolving technologies such as AI, proliferating media, and shifting public understandings of expertise, a primary concern of epistemic carelessness is that it facilitates the spread of harmful misinformation. I further argue that conversational participants share an important responsibility to resist the temptation to default to assumed epistemic policies and instead work collaboratively to establish shared guidelines for evaluating information in any given conversation.