I'm a Philosophy Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. I grew up in Los Angeles and completed my M.A. at California State University, Long Beach.
I'm also a musician and have been playing in metal bands since I was a teenager. My current project Wounddress is for my fellow emo kids who never grew up.
My dissertation is about love, respect, and what they have to do with each other. I argue that the apparent tension between them dissolves once we rethink respect from the ground up, and that doing so reveals what's distinctive about love's role in creating lives that are at once moral and yet distinctly our own.
I'm a first-generation college student, and a big part of what drives my teaching is helping the next generation of philosophers find their place and voice in the discipline. I teach at the University of Pennsylvania and in the greater Philadelphia area. I'm also a Philosopher-in-Residence at the Academy at Palumbo in collaboration with PLATO, and a volunteer instructor for Penn's Philosophy for the Young.