Courses:
American Food & Culture studies culture through food production and consumption, investigating mainly American foodways through such diverse topics as labor, science and technology, the environment, the body, race and ethnicity, ethics, and gender, and the ties among them. We will discuss global issues of hunger and obesity, food safety and waste, and private versus public control and responsibility for food choices. The course is designed to press students to consider how humanities, as opposed to science and technology alone, can help us deal with the global challenges of food sovereignty and access, and environmental and human health.
Nature & History (HIST223) is about the history of the representation and display of nature from Cabinets of curiosities to modern-day zoos and nature programs. We study the role of aesthetics in science, the gender dynamics of botanical illustrations, the racial politics of Smokey the Bear, and the social dimensions of museum and zoo designs. We conclude with a critique of the strategies for representing Climate Change in an age of doubters. In all cases, you will pay particular attention to the way natural resources and concepts of nature have affected people differently, and inequitably, depending on their race, class, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity.
American Environmental History (HIST337) Hiking on a mountain trail or swimming in a lake may strike most of us as being in nature, but what about turning on a facet or taking an elevator up a skyscraper? And who has access to a water facet or skyscraper and who doesn't? This course addresses those sorts of questions. Students gain a deeper understanding of the vital role the environment has played in American history, the ties between nature and culture, and the social disparities that belie the idea of One Earth.
Theory & Practice Material Culture Studies (MCDT610): helps graduate students to use objects as sources for historical and cultural analyses and to decipher ideas and meanings embedded in a variety of artifacts, from souvenirs to plastic pink flamingos. We especially focus on museum objects, examining how an object – or set of objects - can communicate history and cultures to the public, and how an object is transformed from mundane houseware to a precious icon when placed within an exhibit case. We especially interrogate the collection and display of indigenous objects in their colonial and post-colonial context.
Museum Studies: What can historic house museums, city zoos, national art galleries, and tribal museums tell us about how Americans have thought about themselves and the world around them? In this course, students study the history, politics, and design of museum collections and exhibitions. They explore these topics through scholarly writings, visual and material culture studies, visits to local cultural institutions, and through the development and organization of an original exhibition.
I also teach graduate and undergraduate courses on visual culture, American Studies theory and practice, farming in American society and culture, public art, and race and ethnicity. In many of my courses, the students organize exhibitions or engage in public humanities projects, including an oral history project where students interviewed urban residents about urban gardens in their neighborhood. Most recently, students in my spring 2019 graduate course in material culture studies helped launch the Crow Indian Virtual Archive and Museum and during the summer of 2020 I supervised undergraduate interns working on the site. I have also created and organized virtual museum internships for UD students who created online exhibitions for regional museums.
Mentorship & Advising: I have extensive experience as a graduate advisor, serving on dissertation committees on such topics as the animal rights movement; landscapes in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath; a social and environmental study of contemporary New Orleans; a labor, race, and environmental history of northern California from 1850 to 1950, and the history of Victory gardens, among others.
