Bio
My education and experience have led to me to two separate areas of teaching and research here at ISU. First, I earned an Ed.M. in Curriculum and Instruction from Harvard University and have several years’ work experience as high school social studies teacher and curriculum leader. At ISU, I coordinate the secondary social studies education program in alternate years. I am always happy to answer questions from students considering the profession of teaching.
Second, I earned my Ph.D. in American History from the University of Maryland, College Park, with specialties in women’s and gender history and war and society. My first book, Rough Draft: Cold War Military Manpower Policy and the Origins of Vietnam-Era Draft Resistance (Cornell University Press, 2019), argues that policy-makers’ ideas about masculinity had a huge impact on their creation of the deferments that made America’s Vietnam War draft so unbalanced. I am currently working on several projects.
- First, I am researching a book on how peace activism influenced military manpower policies since the advent of the all-volunteer force in 1973. Although not well known, an international grassroots network of activists helped individual servicepeople leave the military and upgrade discharges, limited military access to high schools, and subverted Selective Service registration. Congress, the Department of Defense, and the individual service branches had no choice but to pay attention to them.
- Second, I am co-authoring a book with Dr. David Fitzgerald at University College Cork on the history of the U.S. military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. We are examining how this compromise measure to allow gay and lesbian Americans mediated access to military service came about and why it failed. This is a story of politics, culture, and Americans’ disparate definitions of the meaning of military service.
- Finally, I have an edited volume, Conscription in the Global Twentieth Century, under contract with the Modern War Studies series at the University Press of Kansas.
At ISU, I teach HIST 2220: Survey of US History II; HIST 3010: The Historians Toolbox; HIST 3860: American Women’s History; HIST 4570: The History of American Sexualities; HIST 4890: The World at War, which I focus on the Vietnam War; and HIST 4980: Methods in Teaching Social Studies. Once it completes the approval process, I will also teach a course on United States History, 1975-present.
Ask An Historian
What have you learned from researching and teaching history?
From my research I have learned that history is complex because people are complex. There are few historical “good guys” or “bad guys.” People make decisions for all sorts of reasons, and the sum of those decisions becomes “history.” From my teaching I have learned that students want to understand that complexity, both so that they can better understand their own lives and the lives of their family and so that they can better understand how to make sense of the complexity of the present. It’s their enthusiasm that makes teaching my favorite part of my job.