Education
- Ph.D., History, Rice University, 2014
- MA, American History, James Madison University, 2009
- BA, History, Grove City College, 2007
What are the main focuses of your research?
My research focuses on place-based histories—on the ways that small places and their people navigate large scale historical changes (economics, technology, environment). My current book project looks at the twentieth-century history of arsenic and how it reshaped agricultural communities, industry, and environment in the US and abroad.
Professional Experience
Associate Editor, Journal Agricultural History
Courses Taught
- American History
- Cities, Suburbs, and the Countryside
- History Senior Seminar
In your opinion, what is the most important piece of advice you give your students to help them succeed?
Make connections across your courses, both in the major and outside of it. Each academic discipline and subject you study gives you new tools and ways to think about history that enrich our study of the past and help us see thinks we might not otherwise see.
Selected Publications
- “Metropolitan Houston and its River” in Nature and Place in Texas: A History. Texas Tech University Press, 2025, 161-192.
- Baker and William Thomas Okie, "Writing in Place: An Introduction," Agricultural History 99.4 (November 2025), 509-36. [Introduction to special issue with seven articles]
- “Cities and Agriculture in America” in A Companion to American Agricultural History, edited by R. Douglas Hurt, 129-143. Wiley Blackwell, 2022.
- Bulldozer Revolutions: A Rural History of the Metropolitan South, University of Georgia Press, Environmental History and the American South Series, 2018.
Is there any additional personal experience you would like to share?
I was a professor at East Texas A&M University for 10 years before coming back to GCC in 2025. That experience has helped me appreciate how invested everyone at this college is in pursuing wisdom, truth, and beauty. I am happy to be a part of the work here.