Teaching

What does it mean to be an American? How has that meaning changed over the past century and a half? What does it mean to reform society and how have different groups pursued this change? How did we end up where we are today? These are just some of the questions at the heart of HIST 1362, which provides an overview of U.S. history from the 1870s to the present.

University of Colorado Denver
Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024

This course equips students to be effective and responsible users of digital technology. It does so through two pathways: one intellectual and the other practical. First, students will develop an intellectual framework for studying the role of digital platforms, software, applications, companies, and institutions within modern society, tackling larger topics like artificial intelligence, consumer privacy, and algorithmic bias. Second, students will learn how to use an array of digital tools and applications, such as website building, graphic design, video editing, audio recording, and processing, analyzing, and visualizing data.

University of Colorado, Denver
Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2024

This course will introduce you to the practice of studying history. Over the course of the semester you will learn how and why History’s method of inquiry is different from that of other disciplines, and what disagreements have developed within the profession over the years of its existence. It also asks how we can know something about the past and how historians “do” history in the hopes of illuminating what lies behind “the facts” of what happened. Finally, this class will help you develop the practical skills to thrive as a History Major, both in future classes at CU Denver and beyond: analyzing sources, evaluating arguments, interpreting evidence, writing and communicating, and conducting original research.

University of Colorado Denver
Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Fall 2022

In this capstone seminar, students will produce an original, article-length research paper based on archival sources. The course focuses on the history of the Western United States, and most student projects will examine some aspect of Western history or the history of Colorado. Students will learn how to navigate archives and refine their skills at collecting, organizing, and analyzing evidence from an array of primary sources. They will also learn to use scholarly books and articles to add context to their stories and position their findings within a wider literature.

University of Colorado Denver
Fall 2020, Spring 2022

In Data: A User Manual, you will learn the basics of data analysis along with the history of how data has been collected, used, and misused over time. This course runs along two parallel tracks, one technical and one historical. On the technical track, you will learn how to create, process, analyze, and visualize data using the Python programming language. On the historical track you will complete readings and discussions about the history of data, focusing on three topics in U.S. history: 19th-century plantation slavery, government surveillance, and data collection by corporations. Together, these two tracks will provide you with a “user manual” for how to effectively and ethically use data to understand the past and present.

University of Colorado Denver
Fall 2021

No episode in United States history looms larger in the collective memory of the nation than the American Civil War. This course examines the war itself along with its less-studied aftermath, the era of Reconstruction. Students will learn about some of this period’s defining issues: slavery and race, democratic politics and sectional division, violence and warfare, and struggles over the meaning of citizenship. Students will not only learn what happened, but how these events are remembered.

Northeastern University, University of Colorado Denver
Spring 2019, Fall 2020

What does it mean to be an American? How has the idea of the United States and the meaning of American identity changed over the course of U.S. history? What are some of the major issues, themes, and turning points that have shaped this process? These questions are at the heart of HIST 1130, which provides an overview of U.S. history from the 1600s to the present.

Northeastern University
Fall 2018, Spring 2020

What is the “spatial turn” and how does it intersect with the digital humanities? This course offers an introduction to major theories of space and place and how they are being applied through technologies such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and 3D modeling. This is a hands-on course in which students will develop digital skillsets, including creating maps and visualizations, working with and analyzing spatial data, and building virtual models of historical buildings - all within a broader humanities framework of spatial theory.

Northeastern University
Spring 2018, Spring 2020

What is the “spatial turn” and how does it intersect with the digital humanities? This course offers an introduction to major theories of space and place and how they are being applied through technologies such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and 3D modeling. This is a hands-on course in which students will develop digital skillsets, including creating maps and visualizations, working with and analyzing spatial data, and building virtual models of historical buildings - all within a broader humanities framework of spatial theory.

Northeastern University
Fall 2018, Fall 2019

American history is typically narrated from an eastern perspective, a story about a nation moving westward across the continent. This course reverses that perspective, looking at American history from the point of view of different peoples and places in the area that eventually became the western United States.

Northeastern University
Spring 2018, Fall 2019

This course will introduce you to the practice of studying history: analyzing sources, evaluating arguments, interpreting evidence, writing and communicating, and conducting original research. You will learn these historical skills from a very modern starting point: Donald Trump and his presidency. This class is not a biography or history of Trump specifically, but rather the longer historical context behind some of the themes and topics related to his presidency. We will use current events as a jumping-off point to learn how to study the past.

Northeastern University
Fall 2017

This course explores the history of the United States through a focus on space and geography – not just the physical geography of mountains and coastlines, but how Americans have imprinted different kinds of space onto that land through maps and trade, elections and protest, migration and warfare.

Rutgers University
Spring 2016

The course answers offers an introduction to the practice of digital history in an age of "big data." By pairing traditional forms of historical analysis with cutting-edge technological tools, the class will explore how competing visions of the West played out in the mental maps of nineteenth-century Westerners and non-Westerners.

Stanford University
Fall 2012

Multi-day simulation of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Attend an immigration hearing at federal immigration court.

Build a project that takes any format besides a traditional written paper.

Explore a single dataset and write an analysis of it, including a data biography and visualization.

Conduct research and record a podcast about a Civil War memorial, statue, or monument.