THE AMERICAN ELSEWHERE

From the University Press of Kansas. The American Elsewhere delves into the cultural and emotional world of adventurers in the early nineteenth-century United States. With their words and images, they energized the mythologies of the West and contributed to the justifications of territorial conquest. They told stories of exhilarating perils, boundless landscapes, and erotic encounters that elevated their chauvinism, avarice, and violence into forms of nobility. As self-proclaimed avatars of American exceptionalism, adventurers transformed westward expansion into a project of romantic nationalism. For more information see The American Elsewhere.

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CURRENTLY

The Great Plains Quarterly published my article "'Our Eyes Ached with the Very Vastness': Reimagining the Great American Desert as the Great American Prairie" in the Summer 2019 issue. Thanks to Chuck Braithwaite and the entire staff at GPQ for supporting this project. For an abstract and links to the images used in the article click here.

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ELSEWHERES

Marking the 172nd anniversary of the surrender of Vera Cruz, Mexico, to US forces (March 28, 1847), I take a look Charles J. Peterson's 1851 gothic "ballad" and Joseph H. Brightly's engravings that depict the horror of mass civilian casualties. It is a preview of sorts of my next book project on my blog of sorts. Click here.