In the fall of 2014, I returned to Mississippi and joined the Department of Sociology and Anthropology as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Mississippi. At the University of Mississippi, I am affiliated with the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies and a member of the Critical Race Studies Group. My research interests include religion, popular culture, gender and sexuality, and race/ethnicity. Much of my latest work focuses on how young people use defiant music to make religion their own outside of religious institutions and/or to contest dominant racial frames about marginalized religious groups. My most recent research is an ethnography that examines how evangelical Christians are "being the church" through public service and advocacy in Mississippi. In addition to this project, I am collecting qualitative data on how evangelical women ministries define and exercise leadership at the individual and organizational level.