Since I came to the College of Wooster in 2001, I’ve taught courses in twentieth-century European history, modern France, the world in 1900, crime & punishment in history, the history of news and media, the witness in history, and documentary filmmaking. I served as Chair of the Department of French & Francophone Studies in 2017-18. Before this I Chaired the Program in International Relations (now the Program in Global & International Studies) from 2013-2015, and the Department of History from 2010-2013. In the last few years I have led overseas travel/study courses to make documentary films in Buenos Aires.
My research interests center on the cultural history of France in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. I’ve written on crime and catastrophe in the French press of the late nineteenth century, ideas of the mass public, the debates surrounding the anarchists of Paris in the 1890s, ideals of the press as fourth estate, and the emotions of the public execution crowd. I’ve also spent some time investigating the history of emotions, visual culture, and early detective fiction and the anti-detective tradition. I’ve worked with students on the rich local history of our northeast Ohio city, founding and directing the Wooster Digital History Project.
I am currently working on several research projects: an article on true crime in interwar France, a book-length manuscript on modernity, mass media and the history of emotions in the nineteenth century, and several documentary film projects including tango and disabilities in Buenos Aires, the cultural history of Madrid, and the Black experience in Wayne County, Ohio.
I spent the fall of 2023 on leave in Paris and Madrid where I had a chance to connect with the outstanding scholars of the Instituto de Historia at the Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales. Other leaves and research trips have taken me to Buenos Aires, Aix en Provence, and Tunis – as well as Ann Arbor and Palo Alto.
Other interests? There’s no shortage: soccer, ultimate, folk music, papier mâché, the old Fiat 500, claymation, playgrounds, chainsaw sculpture, and more. For the past couple years I’ve served as the Director of the Melissa Schultz Nature Preserve, a nature area created to memorialize Melissa Schultz, much beloved professor of chemistry and environmental studies.