I write and teach American cultural and literary history. I'm at work on a book about the hybrid histories of American dance, tracing the way artists from different races and classes have watched, imitated, parodied, and stolen from one another. My work has been supported by the Mabelle McLeod Lewis Memorial Fund, the U.C. Berkeley Center for Race and Gender Studies, and a Mellon Fellowship for Humanistic Study from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. I'm also a poet.

Criticism

"In Conversation: Lenka Clayton with Megan Pugh." a. bradstreet. November 2013.

"Hardscrabble: A Different Woody Guthrie." Boston Review. September 2013.

"The Rite of Spring at 100." Boston Review. June 2013.

"Dance With Me: The Many Partners of Fred Astaire." Boston Review. March/April 2013.

Review of Martha Collins's White Papers. Pleiades. Winter 2013.

"Rootabaga Country." The Point. Winter 2013.

Review of Constance Valis Hill's Tap Dancing America: A Cultural History. Callaloo. Vol. 35, No. 3, Fall 2012.

"Square Dance: Agnes de Mille's Beloved Community." Boston Review. July/August 2011.

Review of The Selected Poems of Ted Berrigan. The Believer. June 2011.

Review of Ange Mlinko's Starred Wire. Pleiades. Winter 2010.

"Who's Bad? How the King of Pop changed the course of American dance." FLYP, Rpt. Entertainment Weekly Online, July 2009.

Review of Ariana Reines's Coeur de Lion. Rain Taxi. Summer 2009.

Poetry

"There are places in the West and I have been to them." Forthcoming in RHINO.

"Fit for Company." Forthcoming in Handsome.

"Gunning Birds," "The State with the Prettiest Names," two untitled prose poems, and a Statement of Poetic Research. Common-place. November, 2013.

"Apparitional as Sails." Sixth Finch. Summer 2013.

"Leroy Kept Bees." Meridian. Summer 2013.

"Begging for Paint," "A Handkerchief in her Purse," and "In the Interrogation Room." New Orleans Review. August 2012.

"Homespun." VOLT #17, May 2012.

"Can't Say How Long" and "With Timid Teeth." The Oxford American. December 2011.

"Chez Paree" and "With a Shut Mouth." Denver Quarterly. May 2011.

"Clownfish, Anemone," "Libraries," "This Morning, This Evening, Right Now" and "You'll Look Sweller." La Petite Zine. February 2011.

"Than a Train Can Haul." ZYZZYVA. November 2010.

"But There Can Be an Abiding," "Our Hero Descants," and "Reaccustomed." Web Conjunctions. February 2007.

Papers

"Blackface Ballet." Futures of American Studies Institute. Dartmouth, June 2011.

“Lyric History: Poetry and the Archive.” Associated Writing Programs Conference. Washington D.C., February 5, 2011.

"Making Ballet American: Agnes de Mille's Rodeo." U.C. Berkeley Working Group on Transnational American Studies, December 3, 2009.

“Who’s Bad? Michael Jackson’s Movements.” U.C. Berkeley Center for Race and Gender Studies, October 1, 2009.

No recent courses taught.