Welcome:

I earned a Ph.D. in history from the Dale Center for the Study of War & Society at the University of Southern Mississippi (Hattiesburg). My current manuscript project analyzes the intersection of race, gender, and place in western Union Civil War commemorations. Examining how Union veterans and their families commemorated the war in the trans-Mississippi West, I argue western Unionists constructed a western-centric narrative of the Civil War to bolster their vision of western expansion and the colonization of western American Indians. My U.S. history courses focus on examining the historical intersectionality of gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, and class throughout U.S.’s past by utilizing methods from social history, cultural history, memory studies, and war & society. Likewise, my classroom focuses on helping students develop and translate their critical reading and writing abilities, and skills in the digital humanities and digital editing to their future career goals.

Based in the University Libraries, I am the Digital Humanities Librarian at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion and in June 2024, I will begin serving as the Managing Director of the Society of Civil War Historians. As the co-director of the Civil War & Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi project (CWRGM), I am also part of an incredible research team that partners the University of South Dakota, Mississippi State University, and the University of Southern Mississippi. Together, CWRGM is digitizing and editing over 20,000 documents written to Mississippi Governor’s during the American Civil War and Reconstruction (late-1859–1878). These digital editions make historical records freely available to the public and train USD’s students in the digital humanities using project-based learning.