My research and teaching focuses on the intersections of popular media and capitalism, including the ways cultural assumptions linked to economics evolve across time. My first book,

Historical Theory and Methods through Popular Music, 1970–2000: “Those are the New Saints” (co-authored with Kenneth L. Shonk, Jr.) examined popular music through the prism of historical theory and methods. My second book, Winter in America: A Cultural History of Neoliberalism, from the Sixties to the Reagan Revolution (University of North Carolina Press), examines the interaction of culture and economics across the postwar period, situating the ways neoliberal ideas, the conservative culture war against 1960s social equality legislation, the rise of multinational conglomerates, and popular media came together between the 1960s and 1980s to form the basis for the post-1960s Neoliberal era. My third book, entitled, Free Jazz, Afro-Surrealism, and Modernity at the Dawn of Liberation (under contract with the University Press of Mississippi), examines the history of free jazz between the 1950s-1970s, contextualizing the culture within the centuries-spanning framework of modernity.

As a hobby (and insight into cultural production), I compose/perform soundtracks for films, including the award-winning

Salton Sea (2019), directed by Michael Stevantoni. My music for Stevantoni and Strack Azar's short film, The Banality (2018), won the Award of Excellence for Individual Achievement in Music at the Southern Shorts Awards in 2019. I'm currently working on the full-length feature-film version of The Banality, which should be released by the end of 2021.