Department of History Staff

My research interests center on American society in the first half of the 20th century.  I have done books on Tennessee politics in the 1920s and on the life of World War I soldier, Sergeant Alvin York.  I also co-authored a history of the United States in the twentieth century.  More recently my research has focused on aviation history, particularly the role of the federal government in the development of commercial aviation in the 1920s and 1930s.  Articles drawing on this research have appeared in The Historian and Business History Review and in collections of essays published by the University of Iowa Press and the University of North Carolina Press.  I have received research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association.

My teaching interests focus on American history, primarily in the 20th century.