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About Me

I teach Colonial, Revolutionary and early national American History at the University of North Carolina Asheville, the UNC System’s designated liberal arts campus. I also teach Public History and Digital History courses.  My area of research specialization is in early national legal culture, and I am the author of Remaking Custom: Law and Identity in the Early American Republic (University of Virginia Press, 2011), in addition to articles and book chapters on American legal culture. My current research project explores three generations of the Kent family, prominent lawyers and judges in early national New York, their personal and political networks, and their relationship to the urban and rural spaces of New York.

I am also a scholar/teacher of the Digital Liberal Arts. I am co-Principal Investigator on “Digital Liberal Arts at a Distance,” a Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC) initiative supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation. Recent publications on the digital humanities include “Neither Here nor There: Testing the Boundaries of Place and Pedagogy,” in Roads Taken: The Professorial Life, Scholarship in Place, and the Public Good (Truman State University Press, 2014). I have also co-authored “Digital Liberal Arts at a Distance: A Consortium-Wide Approach,” in Change Magazine (summer 2016) and a forthcoming book chapter on undergraduate research in the digital humanities as a high-impact teaching practice.

I am the 2018-19 Ruth & Leon Feldman Professor for Distinguished Service, and in 2012 I received the 2012 Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching at UNC Asheville.

 

Recent Publications

Remaking Custom: Law and Identity in the Early American Republic. University of Virginia Press, 2011.

“Teaching and Training in the Digital Liberal Arts: The Power of a Consortium,” co-authored with Jeffrey W. McClurken, in Public History in the Digital Age, edited by Mark Tebeau & Serge Noiret, De Gruyter Publishing, forthcoming, 2019.

“Digital Liberal Arts and Undergraduate Research,” co-authored chapter with Jeffrey W. McClurken, in High-Impact Practices in Distance Education: Research and Best Practices, edited by Kathryn E. Linder & Chrysanthemum Mattison-Hayes., Stylus Publishing, forthcoming, 2018.

“Digital Liberal Arts at a Distance: A Consortium-Wide Approach,” co-authored with Jeffrey W. McClurken and Claire Moseley Bailey, Change Magazine, June 2016.

“Neither Here nor There: Testing the Boundaries of Place and Pedagogy,” in Roads Taken: The Professorial Life, Scholarship in Place, and the Public Good, Roger Epp & William Spellman, eds. Truman State University Press, January, 2014.

“The Early Republic: 1775-1815,” in the Blackwell Companion to American Legal History, edited by Sally Hadden and Alfred Brophy. New York: Wiley E. Blackwell Publishing, 2013.

Media Coverage

Social Media

Country Focus

United States

Expertise by Geography

United States

Expertise by Chronology

17th century, 18th century, 19th century, Early Modern

Expertise by Topic

American Revolution, American Founding Era, Book History, Law, Pedagogy