You have made your way to the web home of Mark Tebeau, an Associate Professor of History at Cleveland State University.  On any given day, I research, write, teach, work with the community on public history projects, or toil away in cyberspace, exploring the digital humanities.

As an urban historian, my research  explores how people have constructed–physically and metaphorically–cities and suburbs in the United States. I am completing a book manuscript in which I explore how urban memorials and public art reveal the changing nature of cities and community identity in the twentieth century. The Cleveland Cultural Gardens and Northern Ohio’s vernacular landscape serve as a lens through which to refract a broader story of changing urban landscapes across the nation. I am also researching air racing, exploring how Americans constructed identity, risk, and spectacle in the first half of the twentieth century. My first book, Eating Smoke: Fire in Urban America, 1800-1950, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press.

I am teaching History 111, Introduction to United States History, to 1877 and History 390 Introduction to Social Studies on Tuesdays and Thursdays; I am available at the edges of those days, and for lunch, when I am not teaching. Also, I am available in my offices on Wednesday mornings and afternoons. On Fridays, I usually teach and write in my office, but do not have formal office hours.When not writing or administering the Center for Public History + Digital Humanities (see below), I conduct professional development workshops for K-12 teachers. Please contact me at my university phone number of via email.

I direct the Center for Public History + Digital Humanities, which has a very active plan this semester.  We are developing a regional archive, Teaching & Learning Cleveland, built in the open-source Omeka software from the Center for History & New Media.  Teaching & Learning Cleveland is the backbone for the Center for Public History & Digital Humanities’ next major community history project.  We have also created a host of digital projects, usually in conjunction with the community, including our recently released iPhone Application, Cleveland Historical, which will be available for Android and Blackberry soon. Learn more about it here.

I am deeply engaged in training future social studies teachers, through both my undergraduate teaching but also through professional development programs that I direct. I am the Principal Investigator on two Teaching American History Grants (an initiative of Robert Byrd and George W. Bush), The Sounds of American History and Constructing, Consuming, and Conserving America. We directly reach about 125 teachers (and 25 different school districts) in Northern Ohio.

As a digital humanist, I blog as urbanhumanist, keeping an online diary in which I record my thoughts about professional currents, occasionally comment about ordinary life, and sometimes comment on political matters. The blog began and continues as a way to train myself in the digital humanities. Let me be perfectly clear that posts on urbanhumanist reflect my personal views and sentiments; they are not those of my employer, my department, or my colleagues.