Adjunct Assistant Professor

Education

Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
M.Ed., Lehigh University
B.A., Brown University

 

 

Current Projects:

The Nature of the Erie Canal

Wild Infrastructures: Maintaining Wilderness in the Adirondacks

 

Research Interests

Envirotechnical history: Animals, energy, Infrastructures.

Selected Work

Horses At Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America (Harvard University Press, 2008). Winner of 2009 Pioneer America Society Fred B. Kniffen Award for best book; reviewed in the New York Times Book Review, 30 November 2008

“War Horses: Equine Technology in the Civil War, ” in Industrializing Organisms: Introducing Evolutionary History.  Edited by Susan Schrepfer and Philip Scranton.  (Routledge, 2004) 

‘The Now-Opprobrious Title of “Horse Doctor”: Veterinarians and Professional Identity in Nineteenth Century America,’ in Healing the Herds: Disease, Livestock Economies, and the Globalization of Veterinary Medicine. Edited by Karen Brown and Daniel Gilfoyle (Ohio University Press, 2010)

"Episcopalians in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era" in This Far by Faith: Tradition and Change in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania.  Edited by David Contosta.  (Penn State Press, 2012)

"Wolves in the Wissahickon: Deer, Humans and the Problem of Ecology in an Urban Park" in Nature's Entrepot: Philadelphia's Urban Sphere and Its Environmental Thresholds.  Edited by Brian Black and Michael Chiarrupa (University of Pittsburgh, 2012)

Fairman Rogers Digital Collection Introduction

Encyclopedia of Philadelphia

Book Reviews: Environmental History, Technology & Culture, Journal of American History, Reviews in American History, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Pacific Historical Review, Journal of Economic History, Enterprise & Society, Agricultural History, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, Journal of Southern History.

5 Best Books on Horses in History 

https://shepherd.com/best-books/horses-in-history

Teaching Fields

Animal History
Environmental history
Infrastructure Studies
Civil War, Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Courses Taught

Animals in Science, Medicine and Technology
Energy in America
Gilded Age and Progressive Era 1865-1930
Nature's Nation: United States Environmental History
Politics and Technology in Gilded Age America 
Waters, Roads and Wires
STSC Research Seminar

Faculty Bookshelf