This page represents some of the many areas that interest me in the fields of history and public history. Some are interests I engage with on occasion and have some knowledge or understanding of, others are areas I have put considerable thought, time, and research into. As research projects are completed and I move on to the next, interests shift to facilitate the current project’s needs. This results in a broadening of knowledge, improvement in skills, and in some cases, reawakens long-dormant skills which is always rewarding.
I am an eclectic creature who likes to dive headlong into new skills and I tend to dive deep. As an example, I wanted to learn how to read and navigate by aeronautical charts (I love maps of all kinds) leading to a decade of aviation emersion earning a commercial pilot certificate, instrument rating, advanced ground instructor, airframe and powerplant mechanic certificates, and an unmanned areal system pilot certificate (UAS/drone) for photography.
Fields
Context is provided by other fields of inquiry like anthropology, archaeology, sociology, political science, religion, and many narrowly focused fields like paleography. We also need to consider the cultural contributions of art, music, and literature to any people group as they establish and shift their culture if we want to understand a group or individual in their context at a point in time. Knowing these other fields and their practices provides valuable context, it is wise to expand our knowledge base and remain open to input from fellow academics and non-academics alike on shared topics. Adding any of these skill sets academically to the pool of knowledge to work from is of interest and welcome. As a public historian, there is an array of technical fields in materials preservation, conservation, restoration, visual and wavelength imaging, and a wide range of scanning technologies to be considered and technical experts to work with. There are so many subtopics within these technical fields that are worth pursuing.
The fields I have the greatest affinity for are; documentary editing, paper conservation, bibliography, and graphology.
Periods & Locations
The overarching period of interest to me is the Industrial Revolution (IR) broadly from the 1790s through the 1930s in the United States and the United Kingdom. There are variations in the period to accommodate sociological and technological developments that need to be considered when discussing the Industrial Revolution in context. This is one reason the period is so expansive and includes other clearly defined periods. Most contextual development can be considered post-1790 in the U.S. and post-1770 in the U.K. The latter part of the Industrial Revolution includes the periods of Reconstruction, The Gilded Age, and the Progressive Era. These are key periods in their own right with significant cultural, political, and economic impacts directly related to the sociopolitical, economic, and technologies of the Industrial Revolution.
Subjects
Subject matter of interest includes the sociological, political, and economic environments that gestated the periods above enabling them to occur, and the technologies in power, transportation, and communications that facilitated their development and growth. These sociopolitical conditions and technological developments are inextricably intertwined in such a way that discussion of any individual subject inevitably must include others. The sociological and political effects of the Industrial Revolution are seen most clearly in the study of The Gilded Age and Progressive Era.
Conservation & Preservation
Print materials
Thanks in great part to my grandmother I have a passion for books and keeping them in serviceable condition. This translates to my interest in a range of 18th, 19th, and 20th century print and handwritten materials, documents, logs, journals, registers, receipts, civil and criminal records, correspondence, etc. Their preservation and interpretation are an important part of contextualizing historical periods, events, and motivations. Understanding the technical processes in determining the composition of substrates, marking mediums, and duplication technologies allows for conservation, preservation, restoration, and when needed duplication for exhibition.
Sites & Buildings
As a woodworker and maker, I love vintage and antique hand and power tools. I have spent many enjoyable hours restoring them to a useful state, repairing various objects, and building with wood and other materials. These skills, and many years of property management, maintenance, working in and with construction trades, and many years of study in alternative building systems have proven to be relevant in terms of site and building conservation and preservation. My recently renewed interest in architectural styles has come about through graduate school local history research adding a pool of reference materials on American vernacular of the colonial period to Art Deco, WPA, and Beaux-Arts, adding them to Shaker, Craftsman, Morris, and Stickley references I already had from woodworking.
Archives & Cataloging
The presence of objects, physical or digital, inevitably leads to archival processes. My attachment to the physicality of history does not preclude the benefits of digital access, in many ways it encourages me to want to make objects as available as possible for study and research. Expanding an object’s presence in an archive may include photographic representation, 3D scans, video, audio, text transcriptions, documentary editing, and other representations. A printed pamphlet might lead to a dozen representations all needing to be preserved, cataloged, archived, and made accessible. Each element of this process carries its own field of study and practice. Another grad school project was to develop a simple video archive for an internship. The summer break before the internship was consumed by extensive library science research on cataloging eventually leading to museum registration references, two distinct but related fields.
What Does All of This Mean?
My interests are many and broad. As mentioned elsewhere, I am an eclectic being. This has made narrowing my academic field for my dissertation very difficult. As needs must, I continue to do research looking for an appropriately narrow scope for my dissertation. Since my re-engagement with the academy, I have continued to expand my academic skills and don’t plan on stopping any time soon.