About Me

I am an assistant professor of history at Southern Connecticut State University, specializing in nineteenth-century America, military, naval, and maritime history, the history of science and technology, environmental history, and digital history. I received my Ph.D. in 2012 from Temple University and a BA History in 2005 from West Chester University of Pennsylvania, an institution in many ways like the one I teach at now.

At SCSU, I teach courses in antebellum America, Civil War and Reconstruction, the history of technology, war and society, maritime history, and military history. I am also the primary point of contact for our department's new digital history initiative, City of Elms: The Digital New Haven Project, which teaches students the art of doing local history mixed with the tools and philosophy of the digital humanities.

In 2018, I published my first book To Master the Boundless Sea: The U.S. Navy, the Marine Environment, and the Cartography of Empire. My work has appeared in Environmental History, the Journal of Military History, the International Journal of Maritime History, and the New England Quarterly. I see myself as a teacher-scholar, fostering student-historians with a deep understanding of the many complex ways the past unfolds into the present. At SCSU, I serve my department and the university in a number of ways, most of which touch on cultivating a shared sense of community among faculty, staff, and students.

In my spare time, I enjoy cooking, gardening, running, and trekking to places near and far with my family.