About Me

“I entirely agree that a historian ought to be precise in detail; but unless you take all the characters and circumstances into account, you are reckoning without the facts. The proportions and relations of things are just as much facts as the things themselves.”  ~ Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

I have always been both a student and an educator at heart. I have not always known where this would eventually lead me, but I have always known that the two must necessarily intertwine in any future that I would choose to pursue.

My passion for history was born in a fourth grade classroom. My teacher, Mrs. Sally Redinger, engaged the past in a way that took it beyond names and dates and transformed both content and learner. During my undergraduate years at Liberty University, I was fortunate to be mentored by Dr. Timothy Saxon, another phenomenal educator. Through his example, I learned to read potential in the face of each student and to view every experience as a teaching tool.

n55709638_36651305_2251360After completing my Bachelor of Science in History, I moved to Gyeongju, South Korea, to teach English to a wide range of classes. Although filled with ideas and theory, I lacked practical classroom experience. By the end of the year, I felt as though I had taken an intensive post-graduate course in student behavior, curriculum design, and best practices. There were limited resources at my school, which led to my having to create original curricula for some classes and my own teaching materials for nearly every class.  When I wasn’t in the classroom, I traveled all over Korea.  I rode on a bus with the Olympic torch as it made its way through Seoul en route to Beijing in 2008, I slept on a kindly family’s floor during a hiking trip through Jirisan National Park, and, near Jinju-do, I stood six inches deep in mud with the tide coming in trying to help set the Guinness World Record for the most people on a land-bridge at one time.

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After returning to the USA, and completing my M.A. in History, I moved to Qingdao, China, to become a social studies teacher; eventually, I became the Head of Social Studies. I remodeled existing classes and also created several new classes, including an American History elective that more closely resembled American Studies. From continued research and experience, I grew increasingly convinced of the power and benefit of interdisciplinary teaching. The more I employed interdisciplinary methods, the more engaged and successful the students became. After four years, however, I realized that teaching within one classroom was simply not enough. I wanted to impact education in a far larger manner.

IMG_20150731_1113077_rewindWith this goal in mind, I am now pursuing my PhD in American Studies at Penn State University. My eventual goal is to work preferably in a museum or in a university; I intend also to eventually create original curriculum specially designed for the unique needs of overseas schools that have an interest in having immersive courses in American Studies — having lived that life, I know and appreciate the needs of the teachers and the students.  I also hope to contribute to furthering scholarship through writing articles and perhaps even a book or two — I’m pretty sure I’ve got at least one in me somewhere!

In this blog and within my own scholarship in American Studies, my tastes run toward a strong fascination with  analysis.  I love to analyze films, particularly those made prior to 1960.  I also find myself strongly drawn toward foodways, transnational aspects of American culture, literature, and Irish & Scottish folkways.  My methodology is ever evolving, as I hone my skills.  I rely heavily upon  rhetorical analysis, where possible, and I also heavily lean upon methodology gleaned from my background in history as a discipline.

Pointing the direction to go to get to American from Qingdao, China (from atop Fushan, a mountain that houses a WWI bunker used by the Germans in their fight against the Japanese).

Pointing the direction to go to get to American from Qingdao, China (from atop Fushan, a mountain that houses a WWI bunker used by the Germans in their fight against the Japanese).