Research Interests
Modern United States, public history, environmental history, global heritage, historic preservation, history and new media, museum studies, and oral history.
I am interested in the history of land use and environmental change, modern environmental politics, the relationship between work and leisure, and broader cultural transformations in twentieth century urban and rural America. My work explores the intersection of people and place, changing perspectives of the cultural and natural landscape, and connections between memory, heritage, and public historical interpretation.
Research Projects
Current
Digital:
Auburn University Virtual War Memorial, http://warmemorial.auburn.edu/
Book (and Digital) Project:
Planning Memory and Heritage: The Private Side of Public History explores the changing role of public and private entities in both land use planning and the public presentation and interpretation of history. Beginning with an examination of America’s 49 NHAs, I explore how these public-private heritage landscapes shape experience and what they tell us about modern American planning and public historical interpretation. Focusing on particular sites, this story is situated within the history of twentieth century planned landscapes and considers how urban, suburban, rural, park, and wilderness planning remade modern American society and the environment. I continue to address questions raised in my first book about the history of land use and environmental change and broader cultural transformations in modern America.
Articles and Chapters:
Book introduction, “A Grand Experiment” in Deborah Hayes, Susan Stout, Anne Hoover, and Ralph Crawford, eds., Research for the Long-Term: The Interplay of Societal Need and Research on USDA Forest Service Experimental Forests and Ranges (Springer-Verlag, forthcoming, January 2014).
“Follow the Arrows to the Arrowhead: The Environment of Tourism in the Interwar Years,” in Christopher Wells and George Vrtis, eds., Three Rivers Country: An Environmental History of Minnesota’s Twin Cities and Their Hinterlands.
Past
Book:
The Lure of the North Woods: Cultivating Tourism in the Upper Midwest (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013).
Digital:
USDA Forest Service Region 8 (Southern Region) Oral History Project, http://www.lib.auburn.edu/forestry/.
U.S. Forest Products Lab Centennial Oral History Project, A Cooperative Project of the USDA Forest Service, USDA Forest Products Lab, University of Wisconsin Oral History Program, and University of Wisconsin Digital Collections, http://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/collections/FPLHist
Film Advisor and Script Development: “A Grand Experiment: 100 Years of Experimental Forests and Ranges and Counting.”
Selected Articles:
“‘Air Conditioned by the Cool Breezes of Lake Superior’: Vacationing in Michigan’s Copper Country After World War Two,” in Kim Hoagland, Terry Reynolds, and Erik Nordberg, eds., New Perspectives on Michigan’s Copper Country (Hancock, MI: Quincy Mine Hoist Association, 2007), 135-152.
“Up North on Vacation: Tourism and Resorts in Wisconsin’s North Woods,” Wisconsin Magazine of History (Summer 2006): 2-13.
“Promoting Cloverland: Regional Associations, State Agencies, and the Creation of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula Tourist Industry,” Michigan Historical Review 29 (Spring 2003): 1-37.
Teaching Projects
Current
Currently considering submitting SoTL grant in collaboration with library faculty for integrating community Wiki Edit-a-thon into History in the Digital Age course.
Past
Students have produced short films in my Museum Studies courses, regularly blog in my Digital History/Digital Age course, and conduct and digitally disseminate oral histories in my Public and Oral history courses. I’ve secured external grant funds to carry out some of these efforts in the classroom.