Resume

• 2009

  Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

  History

  Rice University

  Colloquium in U.S. Post 1920

  King Cotton and His Realm

  Twentieth Century United States

  East Texas War and Memory Internship

  Forrest Gump’s America

  Historical Geography

  Oral History Theory and Methods

  US History since 1865

• 2007

  Master of Arts (M.A.)

  American History (United States)

  James Madison University

• Academic Writing

  Grant Writing

  Microsoft Office

  University Teaching

  Archives

  Public Speaking

  Research

  History

  Copy Editing

  Higher Education

  Editing

  Metropolitan Growth along the Nation’s River: Power

  Waste and Environmental Politics in a Northern Virginia County

  1943-1971

  Post–World War II population growth outside Washington

  D.C.

  brought the Potomac River’s watershed under metropolitan oversight. This article examines the history of Loudoun County

  Virginia

  an agricultural area thirty miles upstream from the District of Columbia

  as it faced six proposed urban infrastructure projects between the 1940s and late 1970s. Tracing the history of these proposals reveals the complex interplay between the federal government and its agencies

  urban interest groups

  local governments

  and grassroots environmentalists as each shaped this hinterland’s integration into the Washington metropolis. By underscoring the persistent conflicts between environmental activism

  rural boosterism

  and metropolitan development within one particular region

  this article argues that this process of urban and suburban expansion was often fragmentary

  and ultimately dependent as much on national political trends as it was on fragmented regional power structures.

  Metropolitan Growth along the Nation’s River: Power

  Waste and Environmental Politics in a Northern Virginia County

  1943-1971

  In 1913 Clarence Poe

  the editor of the Progressive Farmer

  launched his infamous campaign to racially segregate rural North Carolina. Historians of comparative race relations have used Poe’s proposal as an example of the intellectual exchanges between South Africa and the US South. This article reinterprets Poe’s segregation campaign by placing it in the context of his decade-long engagement with the transnational Country Life Movement that spanned the Anglo-Atlantic in the years before World War I. While visiting England

  Ireland

  and Denmark

  Poe engaged with prominent romantic agrarian thinkers and encountered scenes of a harmonious

  beautiful

  and prosperous Anglo-Saxon country life that he longed for the South to emulate. In light of these influences

  Poe’s fight to remove blacks from the rural South had less to do with imported racial ideas and more with Poe’s commitment to recreating the Irish countryside in the South. It was Poe’s romantic agrarianism that inspired him to spearhead what was

  by all accounts

  an economically misguided and morally repugnant policy.

  Race and Romantic Agrarianism: The Transnational Roots of Clarence Poe’s Crusade for Rural Segregation in North Carolina

  From Rural South to Metropolitan Sunbelt: Creating a Cowboy Identity in the Shadow of Houston

  I am interested in the social

  cultural

  and environmental history of metropolitan expansion in the twentieth century

  especially the metropolitan South. My dissertation uses case studies in Northern Virginia and Houston

  Texas to examine the intersection of suburban expansion

  recreational development

  and the transformation of rural communities on the metropolitan fringe. Through chapters on reservoir development

  the rise of hobby farms

  the decline of rural political systems

  the grass-roots movement for smart growth

  and complex transformations of nature on both sides of the suburban frontier

  this dissertation seeks to re-frame the way historians understand the process of suburbanization

  localized environmental politics

  the meaning of rural landscapes

  and the complex

  reciprocal relationships between cities and their hinterlands.

  Baker

  Middle Tennessee State University

  James Madison University

  Rice University

  University of St. Thomas-Houston

  James Madison University

  Texas A&M University-Commerce

  James Madison University

  Led document discussions twice a week for students. Responsibilities also included grading

  individual student consultation

  and giving occasional lectures.

  Teaching Assistant

  Murfreesboro

  TN

  Lecturer

  Middle Tennessee State University

  Commerce

  TX

  Assistant Professor of History

  Texas A&M University-Commerce

  University of St. Thomas-Houston

  Texas A&M University-Commerce

  Commerce

  Texas

  United States

  Associate Professor of History

  •\tDesigned and executed

  with minimal supervision

  an original research project on the metropolitan expansion environmental politics in the US South. \n•\tWrote and defended a prize-winning 500 page dissertation\n•\tConducted dozens of oral history interviews\n•\tCollected and analyzed thousands of pages of archival material from a diversity of governmental and non-profit repositories in Virginia and Texas\n•\tApplied for and received research grants\n•\tPublished book reviews in peer-reviewed journals\n•\tPresented research at multiple professional conferences\n•\tDesigned and taught a course on U.S. suburban history\n•\tServed as the graduate student representative to the faculty

  Rice University

  James Madison University

  Harrisonburg

  Virginia

  •\tDesigned and taught a freshman history seminar entitled \"The United States and Global Environments in the Twentieth Century\"\n•\tDesigned and taught an online-only version of the U.S. history survey course

  Adjunct Professor of History