I am an interdisciplinary historian whose research addresses the formation of modern personhood. I am especially interested in understanding the biopolitics of concepts like mental capacity and risk, and how they shape personhood, wellness, and belonging.

My first book project, Drunkard: King Alcohol, Compulsive Drinkers, and the Nineteenth-Century Challenge to American Democracy, explores the American quest to define, detect, and discipline the “habitual drunkard.” Animated by profound anxieties about the drunkard’s incapacity to care for the dependents and property in his household, legislatures empowered courts to put habitual drunkards under guardianship, grant their wives divorces, and uphold policies that excluded them from life insurance. Some states also disenfranchised persons under guardianship. Intended to protect his family and property from abuse and waste, the habitual drunkard’s loss of property, contract, and voting rights, the dissolution of a marriage, and denial of a life insurance application also punished him. These non-criminal consequences governed habitual drunkards and their households long before federal drug control and Prohibition. Uncovering the construction of habitual drunkenness as an inchoate medico-legal category of self-inflicted disability illuminates a complex nineteenth-century biopolitics of compulsion that anticipates enduring tensions between the medicalization of addiction treatment, punishment, mass incarceration, and more recently, harm reduction.

This research builds a foundation for two future research trajectories. First, I will focus on the expansion of guardianship and the evolution of medico-legal understandings of mental capacity. Second, I will study linkages between the exclusionary practices of the life insurance industry and the advent of modern healthcare systems.

My teaching is centered on making historical knowledge accessible and relevant to students, scholars, and the public. I harness the power of writing, self-reflection, and collaborative learning to move beyond the memorization of names, events, and dates. Instead, I show that history is an active study and interpretation of historical documents and scholarship. I am deeply committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the classroom by prioritizing underrepresented voices on the syllabus and assigning low-stakes and self-reflective writing so students can work with challenging new ideas without the fear of “getting it wrong.” I want students to leave my classroom with a greater appreciation for the complexity of historical analysis, sensitivity to silences and omissions in historical knowledge, and the ability to critically evaluate the reliability and significance of information. Ultimately, I strive to make historical knowledge accessible and relevant so that students become well-rounded, socially conscious citizens.

Courses Taught:

HIST 150 United States to 1876
HIST 201 Pandemics in U.S. History
HIST 344 Antebellum America
HIST 345 Civil War Era
HIST 380 Alcohol and Drugs in U.S. History (380A5)