Teaching 

At Rhodes, I teach courses in 20th Century US history, specifically focusing on war and society and US politics.  In the majority of my classes, I try to base the course around a  historical problem or set of questions for investigation.  Was World War II truly a "Good War"?  Does the American Dream truly exist or did it ever exist?  What lead to American liberalism′s rapid success and its subsequent demonization by century′s end?  By investigating these topics, I hope to give students a sense of the dynamic nature of historical investigation and encourage them to formulate their own opinions about this nation′s past.

I offer survey classes in the 20th Century United States History, US Foreign Affairs since 1890, 20th Century American Conservatism, and 20th Century American Liberalism.  My research seminars are The Origins of Modern America, 1877-1918, Recent History of the United States, 1945-1989, and Cold War America.  More specialized topics classes include World War II American and Gender and American Warfare. In addition, I have had the pleasure to team teach a class on the Vietnam War with Professor Michael Drompp from the History Department.

Research

My book, Settling Down: World War II Veterans′ Challenge to the Postwar Consensus (Palgrave: December, 2007), explores the processes that muted the dissenting voices of returning World War II male veterans in the immediate postwar years and offers new understandings about the development of Cold War consensus.  My examination moves beyond the "Greatest Generation" image of the World War II generation to show how many vets felt alienated from the home front after the war and worried about their role in the postwar era.  In open-ended responses to the large American Soldier surveys conducted by the government and in the mass media of the immediate postwar years, servicemen often expressed their contempt for a home front that "didn′t know there was a war on."  To locate what happened to this veteran dissent that has been dissected from Greatest Generation understandings of World War II vets, I look at several case studies that show how a developing Cold War consensus, which vets both supported and rejected, led to gradual disappearance of soldier dissent.  Lt. John F. Kennedy′s congressional race in 1946, the image of the disgruntled vet in film noir, and anticommunist attacks on the liberal American Veterans Committee all suggest reasons why the Cold War led to the silencing of the nation′s heroes.  I also investigate the civil rights activism of African-American veterans to show that the Cold War consensus was not successful in eradicating all of the challenges brought by World War II vets.  By showing the disappearance of dissenting veterans′ voices, my book offers new insight into the growth of Cold War unity, but it also retrieves lost perspectives that both supported and undermined consensus. 

My current research investigates post-1950s liberal politics and the changes in progressive thinking, especially after the Reagan Revolution of 1980.

Other interests

I was recently named the chair of American Studies at Rhodes College and have been trying to use my interest in interdisciplinary research to lead the program in new directions.  I am currently teaching an Introduction to American Studies course on The American Dream with Professor Leslie Petty from the Rhodes English Department.