I am a public historian, a trainer of K-12 social studies (especially history teachers), and a digital humanist.  As a public historian, I work with colleagues, students, and the community to “curate the city,” thinking about the vernacular landscape as if it were a museum collection, in need of conservation and interpretation.

The regional urban landscape is our research laboratory, and along with Professor Mark Souther, I founded the Center for Public History and Digital Humanities.  In conjunction with undergraduates and regional teachers, and colleagues, I developed a website devoted to the history Cleveland Cultural Gardens. We at the Center built the to the Euclid Corridor Transportation Project in collaboration with Cleveland Public Art, ideastream and the Greater Cleveland Regional Transportation Authority. The project interprets the region’s history in multimedia stories that appear on nineteen interactive, multimedia kiosks located along Euclid Avenue in 2009. We have crafted a parallel oral history project. To date, we have collected over 450 oral histories.

The Center for Public History and Digital Humanities has nearly a dozen ongoing projects, and dozens of project partners, ranging from the Shaker Lakes Nature Center to the Center for History & New Media. Check the links on this page or go directly there.

I also help to coordinate the department’s social studies program, and I am and have been the director of several Teaching American History Projects, including Rivers, Roads, & Rails and the Sounds of American History, and Constructing, Consuming, and Conserving America, in collaboration with the Educational Service Center of Cuyahoga County.