Personal Statement:
I teach and write about 19th-century U.S. history, with a emphasis on political economy. My major project right now focuses on how different conceptions of economic creativity helped lead to the Civil War.
Advisor to:
Research and Teaching Interests:
- Nineteenth Century U.S. (especially Early Republic and Civil War)
- Political Economy
- Environmental History
- History of Education and Schooling
- Teaching History
Current Projects:
- Common Schools in the Kentucky Bluegrass Region
How the most advanced slave economy in the U.S. lagged well behind in providing basic education for most residents. - Norfolk’s Postbellum Economic Revolution
Shows how railroads and new shipping technology transformed Norfolk after the Civil War. - Threshold Concepts and the Teaching of History
See this paper for a good sense of where this research is headed. - Patenting in the Kentucky Bluegrass
In-progress paper showing that patenting rates in the Bluegass lagged far behind neighboring Ohio.
Selected Publications:
- Modernizing a Slave Economy: The Economic Vision of the Confederate Nation
UNC Press, 2009 - A House Dividing: Economic Development in Pennsylvania and Virginia before the Civil War
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. - Shifting Cultivation, Slavery, and Economic Development.” Co-authored with Viken Tchakerian.
Agricultural History 81 (Fall 2007) - “Toward a Social History of the Corporation: Shareholding in Pennsylvania, 1800-1840,”
in The Economy of Early America: Historical Perspectives and New Directions edited by Cathy Matson (University of Pennsylvania, 2006). - Markets and Manufacturing: Industry and Agriculture in the Antebellum South and Midwest” Co-authored with Viken Tchakerian.
in Susana Delfino and Michele Gillespie (eds.), Global Perspectives on Industrial Transformation in the American South (University of Missouri Press, 2005). - “Imagining ‘A Great Manufacturing Empire’: Virginia and the Possibilities of a Confederate Tariff, Co-authored wtih Jay Carlander.
Civil War History 49 (December 2003): 334-352.
Courses Taught:
- History 17B
- History 162 (U. S. Early Republic)
- History 164 (U. S. Civil War)