An historian of industrialization in America, I study railroads and Native Americans and how they interacted during the Gilded Age in the Indian territory. I study the West and railroads. I am an instructor at Hastings College in Hastings, Nebraska and an instructor at Nebraska Wesleyan University for the Master's Program in Historical Studies. I also teach at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the History Department. Further, I am finishing my PhD in American History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln studying nineteenth century history, specifically railroads, coal mining, and industrialization in Indian Territory. I use digital tools to further research and publication and am very interested in scalable projects that are usable on smaller campuses. I have worked on Civil War Washington, a digital project on Washington DC integrating the works of Walt Whitman and the geography of Abraham Lincoln with Ken Price and Ken Winkle through the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities. I also worked on Railroads and the Making of Modern America, a digital project directed by Will Thomas and on Digital History, a digital project directed by Will Thomas and Doug Seefeldt. I am eager to see what can be done with history and technology in an academic sense, moving beyond basic consumer-oriented historical content and into alternative displays and interactions between users and content to explore non-linear digital history.
Thesis
Redeeming The Time: Protestant Missionaries and the Social and Cultural Development of Territorial Nebraska, Dissertations, Theses, & Student Research, Department of History (2006)
The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in May of 1854 formally opened a new region...
Presentations
Enticing the Iron Horse: The Unexpected Effects of Railroads on Town-Building in the Great Plains, James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities (2008)
Town building in the Great Plains during the 19th century centered on railroads. Railroads were...