Biography
After completing my BA in History at the University of Delaware, I earned my PhD at the University of Southern California. Prior to joining ISU, I was a postdoctoral instructor at Caltech.
Current Courses
200Doing History: An Introduction
227Early Modern Europe
101Western Civilization To 1500
101Western Civilization To 1500
332Environmental History
490Readings -- Field Of Study
101Western Civilization To 1500
101Western Civilization To 1500
Teaching Interests & Areas
Early Modern Europe, Environmental History, British and Irish History, Atlantic World, Global History
Research Interests & Areas
My first book No Wood, No Kingdom: Political Ecology in the English Atlantic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021) examines fears of wood scarcity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the ways in which they shaped English colonial expansion.
My next project examines the history of municipal water supplies, steam power, and climate in the English Atlantic World.
Book Review
The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America by Jonathan Zimmerman [Book Review] in Teaching History: A Journal of Methods (Spring 2021), 46 (1), pgs. 34-35
"A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet [Book Review]," Teaching History: A Journal of Methods, 45, no. 1 (2020), 71-73
"Nature and the Environment in Nineteenth-Century Ireland [Review]," Environmental History 25, no. 4 (October 2020), 802-804
"Ellen Browning Scripps: New Money and American Philanthropy [Book Review]," Southern California Quarterly (2020), 102 (3), pgs. 319-321, https://doi.org/10.1525/scq.2020.102.3.319.
Book, Authored
No Wood, No Kingdom: Political Ecology in the English Atlantic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021)
Journal Article
“Composting in the herbarium” (co-authored with Melissa Oresky), Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture (Autumn 2020) issue 52, pgs. 156-172.
Presentations
No Wood, No Kingdom Book Talk, Early American Seminar Series, USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, 11 September 2021
“Mud, Steam, and London’s Eighteenth-Century Water Companies,” University of Chicago British History Seminar, 19 July 2021
“Scarcity and Early Modern English Expansion,” Early Modern Europe Seminar, Princeton University, 13 October 2021
“Indicted weirs and absolutist political ecology in early modern Ireland,” Northeast Conference on British Studies, 4-5 October 2019
“Panel Discussion: A Confluence of Botanical Interests,” Milner Library, ISU, 1 October 2019
“Wood Conservation, Atlantic Trade, and the Landscapes of Early English Barbados,” North American Conference for British Studies, 14-17 November 2019
Grants & Contracts
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Short-Term Fellowship. Library Company of Philadelphia. Private. (2021)
New Faculty Initiative Grant. Illinois State University. Illinois State University. (2019)
International Seminar Series: Local and Global Environments in Conversation. International Studies Program. Illinois State University.
