Stories do cultural work.

Stories don't simply reflect the cultures that tell them; they help construct them. My research examines narratives as moral architecture: structures through which communities transmit ideas about virtue, authority, gender, belief, and belonging.

Across folk narrative, fairy tale, mythology, and vernacular religion, I am interested in the ways inherited stories teach us what a culture considers natural—and what becomes possible when those assumptions are questioned, resisted, or rewritten.