About

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I am a historian of nineteenth and twentieth century America. I hold PhD in History from the University of Rochester. Previously, I have studied history at the University of Utah and Central Michigan University. I have benefited from living among diverse cultures and in beautiful places. From Utah’s Wasatch Valley, to the rural Midwest, to post-industrial cities and bustling metropolises, I am continuously inspired by the ways in which humans interact with their local environments. These human landscapes are a lens to understand how local cultures interact with the natural world. As such, my research questions begin with a simple premise: humans shape nature and nature shapes humans. This outlook asserts that the relationship between man and nature is far more reciprocal than hegemonic. Environmental realities are a result of human ideologies, culture, and unintended consequences in an ecological system. In turn, human perceptions of the natural world are a result of human and non-human actors.

 

Broadly speaking, my research explores the interaction of nature, capitalism, and culture in nineteenth and twentieth-century America. My book, The Roots of Flower City, examines the role of plant nurserymen in situated in Rochester, New York – the epicenter of the plant trade during that time. Nurserymen promoted a romantic vision towards the natural world — a vision that asked Americans to slow down, tend their gardens, and bask in the splendor of nature’s beauty. Driven by the prospect of a horticultural paradise and tasked with the duties of their profession, nurserymen also became the principal actors of American ecological empire. My research uses big data collection and data visualization to track the flow of plant material across the continent. Trading plants across the continent, nineteenth-century nurserymen provided the physical plant material that enabled and sustained Euro-American settler colonialism.

 

I am currently working on an environmental history of austerity in the United States. This project examines how ecologies and environmental ideas shifted as a result of deregulation, the rise of neoliberalism, and the broader hollowing of public services in the closing decades of the twentieth century. Though this is a national history, I am particular attention to the Rustbelt and the American Midwest.

 

If you would like to contact me, you can find my contact information on my CV. There, you can also find more information about my past research, presentations, and professional experience.

 

Featured In the Media

Below you will find various  articles, radio programs, and documentaries where my research has been featured: