Faculty

• How the story of progress is implicated in the climate crisis (ongoing)
• Fulbright-funded environmental history of Sabana Grande, Nicaragua (ongoing)
• An environmental history of transoceanic canal schemes in Nicaragua (ongoing)
• A book project on the history of the organized summer camp movement in American culture (ongoing)--work featured in this Summer 2024 story in Atlas Obscura
• The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: During the 2005-06 academic year I was a Carnegie Scholar at the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL).  This work resulted in Citizenship Across the Curriculum (Indiana University Press, 2010), a volume I contributed to (see below) and co-edited with Rebecca Nowacek of Marquette University and Jeff Bernstein of Eastern Michigan University. (completed)
• Another SoTL project, "Untangling the Web of Historical Thinking," involved an examination of learning through the evolution of student-produced wikis for a problem-based history assignment.  This project was partially funded by an NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant. (completed)
• The environmental history of photographic chemicals 

PEER REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS

• “‘That future age of which we can only dream’”: Exploring the origins of the climate crisis in the Story of Progress. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Vol 57 No. 4 (Fall 2021): 396-408
• "When History Is Now: History and Sustainability in Rural Nicaragua," A Contracorriente: una revista de estudios latinoamericanos,  Vol. 17 No. 2 (Winter 2020): 69-88
• "Paths to Empowerment: A Case Study of Local Sustainability from Rural Nicaragua," with Susan Kinne in Patricia Flynn, Milenko Gudić, Tay Keong Tan, eds., Global Champions of Sustainable Development (London: Routledge, 2019): 42-54.
• "Chronicles of Discontent, Tribunes for Change: The Underground Press and Columbia in the Vietnam Era,” with Seth A. Smith, Missouri Historical Review 112 (April 2018): 207-223.
• "Rehabilitating Citizenship: Lessons from Across the Curriculum," with Jeff Bernstein and Rebecca Nowacek in The Journal of Humanities in Rehabilitation, October 2017
• "The Citizenship Imperative and the Role of Faculty Development," with Rebecca Nowacek and Jeff Bernstein in To Improve the Academy, Vol. 30 (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2011): 54-70.
• "Local Environmental History and the Journey to Ecological Citizenship," in Smith, Nowacek, Bernstein, eds., Citizenship Across the Curriculum (Indiana University Press, 2010)
• “What History's Good For: Service Learning and Studying the Past,” Learning and Teaching: The International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences 2 (Winter 2009): 31-49.
• “‘Silence, Miss Carson!’: Science, Gender, and the Reception of Silent Spring,” in Lisa Sederis, ed., On Nature’s Terms: The Legacy and Challenge of Rachel Carson (SUNY Press, 2008).
• “The ‘Ego Ideal’ of the Summer Camper and The Nature of Summer Camp” Environmental History 11 (January 2006): 70-101.
• “'Silence, Miss Carson!'”: Science, Gender, and the Reception of Silent Spring,” Feminist Studies, 27 (Fall 2001): 733-52.
• "The Short Life of a Dark Prophesy: The Rise and Fall of the Population Bomb Crisis, 1965-1975," in Nancy Schultz, ed., Fear Itself: Enemies Real and Imagined in American Culture (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1999): 331-54.
• "The Value of a Tree: Public Debates of John Muir and Gifford Pinchot," The Historian 60 (Summer 1998): 277-298.

 OTHER WRITING

• "What Does the U.S. Owe Climate Refugees?" Zócalo Public Square (October 2021)
• "When History Is Now: Some Challenges and Rewards of Doing Local Environmental History in Nicaragua," ASEH Newsletter (December 2017)
• “This Land Is Our Land: The Bitter Debate over America’s Public Spaces,” The Growler (March 2017)
• "Don't Retreat. Teach Citizenship" with Rebecca Nowacek and Jeff Bernstein,The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 20, 2017
• "Historical Thinking in a Digital Age" a blog post on Process: A Blog for American History, Organization of American Historians, Oct. 15, 2015.
• "Mel West Promotes a Vehicle That Gives Dignity and Mobility to Disabled People," Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 7, 2015
• "Varieties of Historical Experience," Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, Winter 2013
• "History with a Beer Chaser," The Chronicle of Higher Education, Dec. 11, 2012
• "If Henry Could See Us Now," Inside Higher Ed, November 2, 2010