Position: Professor of History; Director, Georgia Tech Honors Program
Department: School of History, Technology, and Society

Area of Specialization:
Early American history, with a special emphasis on the era of the American Revolution; American environmental history.

Interesting projects:
"Although I originally came to Georgia Tech to teach early American history – a topic I still love, and one that will always remain an important focus of my teaching and writing – I've gradually moved into another equally fascinating field, environmental history, the study of the many ways human beings have thought about, interacted with, changed, and been changed by the natural environment. It's an issue that's of immediate concern to all of us these days, of course, and it's an area of inquiry that draws on many different disciplines, ranging from the humanities and social sciences to the natural sciences and engineering. The project I'm working on right now is a book called Naturalist Nation: The Art and Science of Birds in Audubon's America, which takes the great artist-naturalist John James Audubon as a human focus for examining a broader cultural understanding of birds and, more generally, nature in the first half of the nineteenth century. One of the things I like best about being a historian, in fact, is the freedom to move around in both topic and time, and Tech has been a good place to exercise that freedom. I've never felt slotted into a specific spot.

"More recently, I've been able to move into a new administrative area too, as director of Tech's Honors Program. It's been an exciting opportunity to work with some energetic and engaging students and some equally committed faculty colleagues to develop a program that emphasizes a spirit of intellectual inquiry and social concern. I've been delighted, even refreshed, by the way the Honors Program has taken shape, and I'm confident it'll come to play an important role in enhancing the life of the whole campus community."