My goal as a teacher is to have students explore history not as something that already exists, waiting for us to discover, but rather as something that is produced, through careful analysis of evidence. This moves students beyond rote memorization to enter a classroom where critical thinking, diverse perspectives, and argumentation take center stage. In all my classes, students practice doing history, by reading and interpreting primary sources, making sense of different and often contradictory perspectives, by writing persuasively, and by considering key concepts of historical thinking such as change/continuity over time, causality, context, and contingency.

At Old Dominion University, I teach undergraduate and graduate history courses on the United States, migration, and food. These courses approach U.S. history from a global perspective and emphasize the themes of diversity and internationalism. I also regularly teach Historical Methods, a required course for the history major that introduces students to the questions, methods, tools, and approaches involved in studying and doing history both in the classroom and outside academia (public history).

I am also the Internship Coordinator in the History Department. I help students locate and secure public history internships and teach independent study courses with students doing internships for academic credit. We have had history majors intern at a variety of museums, archives, historical societies, and historic sites in the Hampton Roads area. Some of those sites include the Hunter House Victorian Museum, the Hampton Roads Naval Museum, the MacArthur Memorial, the ODU Special Collections and University Archives.

Undergraduate Courses:

Internship/Public History

Senior Seminar: Food in World History

Senior Seminar: Migration and Mobility in U.S. History

Robber Barons, Reformers, and Radicals: The Gilded Age and Progressive Era in Global Perspective

A Nation of Immigrants?: The Immigrant Experience in the U.S.

Historical Methods

Interpreting the American Past (in person and online)

Graduate Courses:

Edible History: Food and Drink in U.S. History

Melting Pot?: Readings in U.S. Immigration History

Cultures of U.S. Imperialism

I have also advised a number of graduate student theses in the fields of migration, labor, and women’s history, with focuses on race/ethnicity and gender:

Rachael De la Cruz, Bracero Families: Mexican Women and Children in the United States, 1942-64.”

Robert Melatti, “Achieving Sourdough Status: The Diary, Photographs, and Letters of Samuel Baker Dunn, 1898-1899.”

Lela Gourley, ” ‘Mixed up in the Coal Camp‘: Interethnic, Family, and Community Exchanges in Matewan During the Virginia Mine Wars, 1990-1922.”

Samantha Edmiston, “Black Gold: Molly Maguireism, Unionism, and the Anthracite Labor Wars, 1860-1880.”

Clara Van Eck, “Changing the Message: Battered Women’s Advocates and Their Fight Against Domestic Violence at the Local, State, and Federal Level, 1970s-1990s.”

Julie Sliva Davis, ” ‘For the Homeland: Die Deutsche Hausfrau and Reader Responses to World War I.”