Caleb holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington, Seattle. His research focuses on nineteenth-century American literature and culture, sexual violence, and the history of slavery in the United States. He is currently at work on a book manuscript that examines how antebellum debates over racial slavery gave rise to legal and popular definitions of sexual violence that still circulate today. His dissertation won the University of Washington’s Heilman Prize for most distinguished dissertation in the English Department from 2019-2020. His work has been supported by the Simpson Center for the Humanities, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the Washington Institute for the Study of Inequality and Race.

In 2018, he received a yearlong “Critical Justice Education” fellowship from the Comparative History of Ideas Department and the Simpson Center at the University of Washington to develop and teach a course series focused on race and incarceration in the United States. Since 2013, he has taught college-level English courses for incarcerated students through University Beyond Bars. He also co-organizes the Alliances Gender and Sexuality Group, a collective working across bars to support queer and trans communities at the Monroe Correctional Complex.