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

I have received a preview of the cover and the page proofs for my new anthology Inventing Destiny, scheduled for a September 2019 release. The artwork features Frances Flora Bond Palmer's Across the Continent. "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way," a hand-colored lithograph published by Currier & Ives in 1868. My thanks to the production team at the University Press of Kansas for their fine work. Click here.  ​

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.