Summary
I am a historian of science and technology who specializes in the history of mining. Outside of those specialties, my research and teaching interests are broad, including environmental history, public history, the history of Nevada and the West, and digital history. Working with co-authors, I have also published in legal history, Deaf history, corpus linguistics, and more.
My book Seeing Underground: Maps, Models, and Mining Engineering in America examines the importance of visual tools to the emergence of the American mining profession. It won the Clark C. Spence Award from the Mining History Association. My second book, Ordinary Lives: Recovering Deaf Social History through the American Census (2024), co-authored with R.A.R. Edwards, uses digital history techniques to uncover the lives of ordinary deaf Americans in the 19th century and outline the methods of a deaf social history that permits historians to see the Deaf community in new ways. My next major projects concern the history of mining displays in American museums, and the history of modern gold mining in Nevada.
I am founder and editor of the book series Mining and Society, published by the University of Nevada Press. Please email me if you are an author considering a scholarly book on mining history! The Journal of Arizona History invited me to serve as guest editor of a special issue on mining in Arizona, slated to appear in mid-2025. I have served as President of the Mining History Association and a trustee for the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House, and I currently serve on the editorial board of the Journal of Australasian Mining History, as well as the boards of Preserve Nevada and the American Heritage Center. Past and present committee service includes work for the Western History Association, the National Council on Public History, the Society for the History of Technology, the Mining History Association, and the Society for Industrial Archaeology. In 2023, I was an invited keynote speaker at the 2nd International Conference on Mining and Underground Museums, Wieliczka, Poland.
Prior to arriving at the University of Nevada, Reno in Fall 2023, I held tenured positions at Arizona State University (2015-2023) and the Rochester Institute of Technology (2007-2015), where I taught the history of engineering, public history, and American history courses. I was born and raised in Northern Nevada and am glad to again be able to make my home in the shadows of the Sierras.
Specialties
- Mining history
- History of technology and science
- Environmental history
- Public history and museums
Courses taught
- HIST 724: Topics in US History (Mining, Technology, Environment)
- HIST 780: Seminar in Methodology
- HIST 441/641: American Environmental History
- CH 203: American Experiences and Constitutional Change (discussion sections)
- HIST 705: Graduate Readings
Selected publications
- with R.A.R. Edwards, Ordinary Lives: Recovering Deaf Social History through the American Census (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2024)
- Seeing Underground: Maps, Models, and Mining Engineering in America (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2014)
- with Stephen Carradini and Claire Lauer, “The Potentials and Pitfalls of Computer Visioning and Machine Learning Methods for Communication Researchers,” SIGDOC ‘23: Proceedings of the 41st ACM International Conference on Design of Communication (October 2023): 133-141
- with Stephen Carradini, “Elements of an Emergent Style Guide for Kickstarter,” Technical Communication 70, no. 1 (Feb. 2023): 54-82
- “Portrait of an Emerging Profession: A Microdata Look at Mining Engineering in America in 1880,” Mining History Journal 29 (2022): 1-19
- with David S. Tanenhaus, “’Our Most Sacred Legal Commitments:’ A Digital Exploration of the U.S. Supreme Court Defining Who We Are and How They Should Opine,” University of Cincinnati Law Review 89, no. 4 (May 2021): 832-881
- “Oral History and Mining History,” foreword to Eleanor Herz Swent, One Shot for Gold: Developing a Modern Mine in Northern California (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2021), xi-xviii
- “Neon Hal-storiography: Hal Rothman and Las Vegas,” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 63, nos. 3-4 (Fall/Winter 2020): 157-160
- with Brian James Leech, “Surveying the Minds: New Trends and Key Classics in Mining History,” Mining History Journal 27 (2020): 40-54
- with Linda L. Berger, “A Rhetorical-Computational Analysis of Justice Scalia’s ‘Remarkable Influence’: The Unexpected Importance of Deceptively Unanimous and Contested Majority Opinions,” Journal of Appellate Practice and Process 20, no. 2 (Fall 2019): 233-325
- “Witnessing the Alaska Gold Rush: Finding Mining History in Court Records,” Mining History Journal 26 (2019): 21-34
- with Penelope Adams Moon, “A Case Study of Virtual Archives for Scholarship and Training,” Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals 15, no. 4 (2019): 217-239
- with David S. Tanenhaus, “Pursuing Gault,” Nevada Law Journal 17, no. 2 (2017): 351-370
- with David S. Tanenhaus, “The Future of Digital Legal History: No Magic, No Silver Bullets,” American Journal of Legal History 56, no. 1 (2016): 139-156
- with David S. Tanenhaus, “’Let’s Change the Law:’ Arkansas and the Puzzle of Juvenile Justice Reform in the 1990s,” Law and History Review 34, no. 4 (Nov. 2016): 957-997
- with Ronald M. James, “Mining and Nevada: An Entwined History,” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 57, nos. 3-4 (2014): 160-176 [2015]
- “Underground Mine Maps and the Development of the Butte System at the Turn of the 20th Century,” IA: The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology 37, nos. 1 and 2 (2011): 97-113 [2014]. Winner of the Robert Vogel Prize for best journal article.
- “In the Aftermath of Tragedy: Herschel Wence and the 1925 City Mine Disaster, Sullivan Co., Indiana,” Mining History Journal 21 (2014): 22-29
- “’Brilliant Contingency of Legal Talent and Mining Experts:’ A Tonopah Apex Lawsuit, 1914-1918,” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 54 (2011): 101-125 [2013]
- “Authority and Visual Culture in American Mining Technology, 1860-1920,” in Mining Perspectives: Proceedings of the 8th International Mining History Congress (ed. Peter Claughton and Catherine Mills (Truro: Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site / University of Stirling, 2011), 84-91
- “Underground Photography and American Mining Before 1920,” Mining History Journal 17 (2010): 103-126. Winner of the John M. Townley Award.
- “Miner, Minstrel, Memory: Or, Why the Smithsonian Has Bill Keating’s Pants,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 131, no. 1 (2007): 81-102
- From Neglected Space to Protected Space: An Administrative History of Mojave National Preserve (Los Angeles: GPO, 2003)
- “Labor Strife in Las Vegas: The Union Pacific Shopmen’s Strike of 1922,” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 44, no. 4 (2001): 313-332
Education
- Ph.D., The Johns Hopkins University
- M.A., University of Nevada, Las Vegas
- B.A., University of Nevada, Las Vegas