Martin Dies State Park, Jasper County, Texas, 2017

The Western Literature Association Recognizes The American Elsewhere, Oct 30, 2018

The Western Literature Association selected The American Elsewhere as the second runner-up for the 2018 Thomas J. Lyon Award for the Best Book in Western American Literary and Cultural Studies. I am humbled by the association with the winner, Richard W. Etulain's Ernest Haycock and the Western, and with the first runner-up, Karen R. Roybal's Archives of Dispossession: Recovering the Testimonies of Mexican American Herederas, 1848-1960.

"Unquestionable Geographies" Published by the Pacific Historical Review, Oct 10, 2018

The Pacific Historical Review published my article, "Unquestionable Geographies: The Empirical and the Romantic in Expansionist Cartography, 1810-1848." In many ways, it fulfills a life-long fascination with maps. The online version at the PHR website includes a download with the maps in color. If you or your library do not subscribe, the PHR requires a fee. On my website, I have prepared a cartobibliography of the maps that I referenced. The list includes links to online map archives where you can access high-resolution images and in most cases with zoom capability.

Delivered Manuscript for Inventing Destiny, Jun 29, 2018

Although it took a little longer than planned, I delivered the manuscript for our Inventing Destiny anthology to our editor at the University Press of Kansas. I am grateful for this group of scholars who worked hard to produce some fantastic essays on US expansion. The project has taken a few unexpected turns, and we still have work ahead. The manuscript will go through a round of peer review and no doubt revisions will follow. I very much enjoy this collaborative process. 

Interview with Civil War Book Review, Mar 6, 2018

I recently interviewed with Tom Barber of Civil War Book Review, an online forum sponsored by the Special Collections at Louisiana State University Libraries. We talked about my book The American Elsewhere. Tom asked some great questions, and my answers were a rambling mess, but it was a fun conversation. Check out Civil War Book Review for the transcript.

This Year's Conference Schedule, Feb 21, 2018

The program committee for the Western History Association has informed me that they have accepted a panel that I helped put together for the October 2018 meeting in San Antonio. The panel, "US Expansion and Its Discontents," will feature presentations by me, Gerrit Dirkmaat of Brigham Young University, and Lori Daggar of Ursinus College. Sam Haynes of the University of Texas at Arlington will serve as our chair and Monica Rico of Lawrence University will provide comment. I will also attend two conferences this spring. On March 8 at the Texas State Historical Association in San Marcos, I will serve as chair for a panel entitled "Commerce, Occupations, and Empires across Southwestern Borders," and on April 13 at the Organization of American Historians meeting in Sacramento, I will participate in a panel discussion on "21st-Century Westerns: Old and New Forms of Imagining History."

Announcing New Anthology Inventing Destiny, Feb 12, 2018

I have an agreement with the University Press of Kansas to edit a new anthology tentatively titled Inventing Destiny: Exploring the Cultures of US Expansion. I am privileged to have a wonderful line-up of established and emerging scholars from a wide-range of disciplines. I am excited about this new project and will share the table of contents soon. We are shooting for a Fall 2019 release. For more information about what we are trying to accomplish, see the Inventing Destiny page. 

Anthology Article "Give Me My Skin" Published, Jan 2, 2018

My article "'Give Me My Skin': William J. Snelling's 'A Night in the Woods' (1836) and the Gothic Accusation against Buffalo Extinction" appears in Dawn Keetley and Matthew Winn Sivils, eds., Ecogothic in Nineteenth-Century American Literature published by Routledge. The essay explores how early nineteenth-century authors and artists like Snelling, George Catlin, Josiah Gregg, and others employed a gothic critique against the human destruction of the buffalo and American avarice. I offer my warmest gratitude to Dawn and Matt for including me in this cutting-edge project and for inspiring my work into new directions.