EDUCATION:
Doctor of Philosophy.
Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, December 2000.
Dissertation title: Romantics, Scientists, Boosters, and the Making of the Chequamegon Bay Region on the South Shore of Lake Superior, 1820-1900s.
Master of Science.
Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, December 1991.
Masters Thesis: Transplanted Germainois: The Transformation of a Latter Nineteenth Century French Agricultural Community in Dane County, Wisconsin.
Bachelor of Arts.
Geography, Minnesota State University-Mankato, June 1989.
ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS:
Researcher/Writer, contracted with the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich, Germany, October 2010 to May 2011.
Lecturer, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Spring Semester 2011.
Fellow, Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois, Fall 2010.
Lecturer, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Spring Semester 2010.
Researcher/Writer, The Arts Institute, University of Wisconsin-Madison, November 2009 to May 2010.
Honorary Fellow, College of Letters & Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, July 1, 2008-June 30, 2009.
Associate Researcher, The University History Project, University of Wisconsin-Madison, July 1, 2006-June 30, 2008.
Assistant Researcher, The University History Project, University of Wisconsin-Madison, January 1, 2001-June 30, 2006.
Project Assistant, The University History Project, University of Wisconsin-Madison, July 1996-December 2000.
Lecturer, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Spring Semester 1996.
Lecturer, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Summer Session 1995.
Teaching Assistant, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Fall 1994.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE:
Environmental Conservation (Geography/Institute for Environmental Studies 339)
Geography of Wisconsin (Geography 342)
Regional Development and Planning (Geography 312)
Physical Systems of the Environment lab (Geography 127)
Teaching interests include:
Human Geography, Cultural Geography, Historical Geography, Environmental History, History of Geography and Higher Education, Medical Geography, Regional Geography of the Great Lakes, North America, and (increasingly) South/Southeast Asia.
INVITED GUEST LECTURES:
“City Boosterism in the Nineteenth Century.” Lecture for Geography 305: Introduction to the City, University of Wisconsin-Madison, September 2006.
“The Rectangular Land Survey in Wisconsin.” Lecture for Geography 342: Geography of Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin-Madison, April 2004.
“The Post-World War II Building Boom and the Development of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Campus Environment.” Lecture for the Sesquicentennial event, A Landscape for Learning: The Environmental History and Future of the UW-Madison Campus, February 1999.
“The United States Public Land Survey.” Lecture for Geography 305: Map Reading and Use, University of Wisconsin-Madison, October 1997.
“Ethnic Settlement patterns in the American Middle West.” Lecture for Geography 345: North American Ethnicity, University of Wisconsin-Madison, February 1997.
MAJOR RESEARCH PROJECTS:
The American Medical Center for Burma, 1946-1965.
In 2009 I began conducting research on the American Medical Center for Burma, Dr. Gordon S. Seagrave, and the Namkham Hospital, near the village of Namkham, Burma (Myanmar). This project began with a couple boxes of documents, hundreds of photos, and several movies that my father and mother collected in Burma, 1961-1963. In May 2009 and April 2010 I photographed thousands of pages of documents in the American Medical Center for Burma papers in the Library of Congress archives. So far I have presented three papers based on this work and intend to submit articles for publication in academic journals. The main product will be a book.
Promotion and Transformation of Landscapes along the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad.
Selected documents from the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad collection at the Newberry Library to have digitized for a hyper-textual essay for a website to be hosted by the Rachel Carson Center, Munich, Germany, to display examples of documents relevant to environmental history available in an important and underutilized collection to an audience of European scholars. Research completed during Fall, 2010; writing completed Spring, 2011.
The University History Project, University of Wisconsin-Madison
The University History Project was established as a special project in 1982, under the
direction of Letters & Science Dean E. David Cronon and Dr. John W. Jenkins. The Project’s purpose was the study of the University of Wisconsin. The major products were volumes three and four of the history of the University covering the years 1925-1945 and 1945-1972, respectively, histories of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the Medical School, the College of Letters and Science, and a history of student housing. The Project also produced histories of departments and various topical papers, conducted special research for deans and chancellors, and served as a resource for the alumni office, the campus community, the media, and others. I worked for the Project part-time from 1996 to 2000, and full-time from 2001 until the Project lost funding July 1, 2008.
PROFESSIONAL CONFERENCE PAPERS:
“Invisible Woman: Fanny Ellison’s Career with the American Medical Center for Burma,” presented at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Washington, D.C., April 15, 2010, in a session titled “Civil Rights in Context.”
“The American Medical Center for Burma Frontier Areas: A Post-World War II Non-Governmental Organization,” presented at the annual meeting of the Wisconsin Geographical Society, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, October 24, 2009.
“The ‘Burma Surgeon’ and Images of Burma in the Media, 1941-1969,” presented at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Las Vegas, March 2009, in a session titled “Media Geography XIII: Landscape, History & the Media.”
“A Short History of Imaginative Geographies of Lake Superior,” presented at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, San Francisco, April 2007, in a session titled “The Scientific Gaze: Nature, Society, and Exploration.”
“Charles Whittlesey and Geological Survey of the South Shore of Lake Superior,” presented at the American Society for Environmental History/Forest History Society joint annual meeting, St. Paul, Minnesota, April 2006.
“Landscapes of Fear: Cinema, Propaganda, and Vigilantism in Northern Wisconsin, 1915-1918,” presented at the Centennial meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Philadelphia, March 2004.
“Charles Whittlesey’s Writings on the Lake Superior Country,” presented at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, New Orleans, March 2003.
“Poets, Surveyors, and Boosters: Constructing the Romantic Image of the Lake Superior Country in the Nineteenth Century,” presented at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, New York City, New York, March 2001.
“Booster Rhetoric, Hard Labor, and Landscape Change in the Chequamegon Bay Region of Lake Superior, 1870-1930,” presented at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Honolulu, Hawaii, April 1999.
“Fin de Siecle Representations of Laborers and Landscapes in the Chequamegon Bay Region of Lake Superior,” presented at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Boston, Massachusetts, March1998.
“Newspapers and the Making of Place: A Northern Wisconsin Example,” presented at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Fort Worth, Texas, April 1997.
“The Wilderness Concept: Contested Ideas of Nature and Place,” presented at the annual meeting Association of the Association of American Geographers, Charlotte, North Carolina, April 1996.
“Images of Nature and Place on Wisconsin’s Lake Superior Coast,” presented at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Chicago, Illinois, April 1995.
“A Many-Storied Place: Popular Narrative Models on the Shores of Chequamegon Bay, 1870-1896,” presented at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, San Francisco, California, April 1994.
PUBLICATIONS:
Books:
The Future City on the Inland Sea: A History of Imaginative Geographies of Lake Superior, Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007 (Awarded the J. B. Jackson Prize by the Association of American Geographers).
Articles/Book Chapters:
“Promotion and Transformation of Landscapes along the CB&Q Railroad,” a hyper-textual essay and online exhibit of documents held by the Newberry Library, funded and hosted by the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich, Germany.
“Campus Unrest and Student Activism,” in A History of Housing at the University of Wisconsin, Barry Teicher, John W. Jenkins, and Eric D. Olmanson (Madison: Division of University Housing, 2006): 82-103.
“Moving the Medical Center to the Western Edge,” Quarterly: The Magazine for the University of Wisconsin Medical School Alumni and Friends, Volume 3, Number 4, Fall 2001.
“Northern Exposures: Bird’s-Eye Views of Nature and Place on Wisconsin’s Lake Superior Coast During the Summer of 1886,” in Wisconsin Land and Life, Robert C. Ostergren and Thomas R. Vale, editors, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997: 470-488.
Book Reviews:
Review of Martin Brückner and Hsuan L. Hsu, editors, American Literary Geographies: Spatial Practice and Cultural Production, 1500-1900 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007), in Journal of Historical Geography (October 2009): 773-775.
Review of Brian K. Obach, Labor and the Environmental Movement: The Quest for Common Ground (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004), in Environmental History (October 2004): 762-763.
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES:
Elected:
Vice President, Wisconsin Geographical Society, Fall 2009.
Editorial:
Guest Co-editor for a forthcoming special issue of Aether: the Journal of Media Geography.
Peer Reviewer:
Wisconsin Geographer, 2006-2009.
Historical Geography, 1998.
Committee Membership:
University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives Committee, 2006-2007.
Panel Participation:
Panelist for a session on “Becoming a Writer II: Human Geography,” organized by Kathryn Davis, San Jose State University, annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, San Francisco, April 2007.
Commentator/Discussant:
Commentator for a session on the “History of Brewing in the Upper Midwest,” at the Northern Great Plains History conference at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, September 2005.
Session Chair:
Chaired a session, “Civil Rights in Context,” at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Washington, D.C., April 15, 2010.
Chaired a session, “Media Geography XIII: Landscape, History & the Media,” sponsored by the Cultural Geography, Communication Geography, and Historical Geography specialty groups, annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Las Vegas, Nevada, March 2009.
Chaired a Session for the 1998 Spring Undergraduate Symposium, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Chair of a session, sponsored by the Historical Geography Specialty Group, annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Chicago, IL, 1995.
Session Organizer:
Co-organizer and Chair of a session sponsored by the Cultural Geography, and Communications Geography specialty groups, with Dr. Christopher Lukinbeal, discussant, Centennial meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2004.
Co-organizer of a session sponsored by the Cultural Geography, Environmental and Behavioral Geography, and Historical Geography specialty groups, with Dr. Patrick McGreevy as discussant, annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1999.
Co-organizer of a session, sponsored by the Historical Geography specialty group, with Dr. Michael Conzen as discussant, annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Boston, Massachusetts, 1998.
Organizer of a session, sponsored by the Cultural and Historical Geography specialty groups, with Dr. Fred Luckermann as discussant, annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Fort Worth, Texas, 1997.
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS:
American Society for Environmental History
Association of American Geographers
(Specialty Groups: Cultural Geography, Environmental Perception & Behavioral Geography, Health & Medical Geography, Historical Geography, History of Geography)
Forest History Society
Wisconsin Geographical Society
AWARDS:
John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize of the Association of American Geographers, awarded at the annual meeting of the AAG, April 19, 2008.
Great Lakes American Studies Association and Ohio University Press Book Award, 2005.
Whitbeck Research Award, Spring 1995.
Cora P. Sletten Scholarship, 1988-1989.
