Roots:
I came
to Green Bay in 2003 from the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I did my doctoral
work in United States history. I grew up in southern Indiana,
however, and I spent my undergraduate years at Hanover
College (also in Indiana).
Courses:
I teach
upper-level history courses on the American colonies, the
early American republic, and American thought, as well as
two introductory survey courses to American history (up to
1865 and 1865 to the present). I also teach an interdisciplinary
Humanistic Studies course that traces developments in Western
culture "From Romanticism to Modernism." For more
specific information, visit my courses
page.
Websites
for my Students:
I recently
created a new website called "Ex
Post Facto: Unsolicited Historical Commentary," which
includes reflections on assigned course readings (to help
provoke student thinking) as well as a variety of course-related
resources, such as advice on writing.
For several
years, I have been editing historical sources for use in the
classroom. I maintain a website, HistoryTools.org,
for publishing the fruits of this labor.
Recent
and Forthcoming Publications:
- Review
of Deborah Blum's Ghost Hunters: William James and the
Search for Scientific Proof of Life after Death (New
York: Penguin, 2006). Available
on HNN.
- Review
of Patrick Carey's Orestes A. Brownson: American Religious
Weathervane (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004). Available
on H-Net.
- "Religious
Sects and Social Reform," in Perspectives in American
Social History Series: Jacksonian and Antebellum Age,
ed. Mark R. Cheathem (ABC-CLIO, 2008).
- Introduction,
Orestes Brownson: Works in Political Philosophy,
Volume IV: 1851-1856, ed. Greg Butler (Wilmington, Del.:
Intercollegiate Studies Institute Press). (forthcoming)
Recent
Presentations:
- “With
Hand in Pocket and Heart in Mouth: Melville’s ‘Bartleby’and
Human Rights in the Age of the Market Revolution,”
co-authored with Brian Steele (Univ. of Alabama-Birmingham),
Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Meeting, April
2008.
- “Teaching
for Understanding: Helping Students Make Connections,”
Faculty Development Conference, University of Wisconsin-Green
Bay, Jan. 2008.
- "For
and Against: Assessing Critical and Historical Thinking,"
Poster Presentation, Faculty Development Conference, University
of Wisconsin-Green Bay, January 2007.
- "Religious
Liberty in the Early United States," Teachers Academy
for the Study of American History, UW-Oshkosh, July 2006.
- Commentator,
"U.S. Intellectual History," Northern Great Plains
History Conference, October 2005.
- "Charles
Brockden Brown and the Problem of Republican Government,"
Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, July
2005.
- "Religious
Figures in the Early Republic: Orestes Brownson, Joseph
Smith, and the Problem of Pluralism," Marathon County
History Teaching Alliance, June 2005.
- "Human
Rights in the Early Republic: The Limits of Egalitarianism,"
Marathon County History Teaching Alliance, June 2004.
- “The
Failure of the Transcendental Revolution: Questioning Individualism
in Antebellum New England,” Organization of American
Historians, March 2004.
- "Religious
Liberals versus Evangelicals in Antebellum America: A Reconsideration,"
American Society of Church History, January 2004.
- “Brownson,
Channing, and the Limits of Self-Culture in Antebellum New
England,” Society for Historians of the Early American
Republic, July 2003.
- “Orestes
Brownson, Transcendentalism, and the Church in America,”
American Society of Church History, May 2003.
Other
Projects and Activities:
- Documenting
Wisconsin History: Editing Sources for the Classroom, 2006-2007
(with support from the UWGB
Research Council )
- Documenting
American History: Editing Sources for the Classroom, 2005-2006
(with support from the UWGB
Research Council )
Professional
Memberships:
|
