Research

I study the intersection of politics, policymaking, and culture during the half-century following American independence, an era that historians generally refer to as the early American republic.  I am particularly interested in the ways that the diverse peoples of North America--governing officials of the United States and European empires, Euro-American settlers, Indians, slaves, free people of color, and people of mixed-race ancestry--imagined what the United States should be and how best to construct public life within that polity.  Of particular interest to me are the functional realities of governance.  Historians have created a rich and revealing portrait of political ideas and party ideologies in the early republic.  Less clear are the ways that people translated those ideas and institutions into formal policies or government procedures.

Most of my research so far has sought to explore these issues within the specific geography of western borderlands.  My current book project, tentatively entitled Creating a Federal Government, will extend beyond the geographic focus of the West to take a national perspective on policymaking.  This study will offer a comprehensive analysis of how the federal government operated in its first decades of existence.

In the process of writing Creating a Federal Government, I am also creating a major digital archive that will reconstruct the scope and scale of the early federal government.  It will contain a full listing of federal officials, both civil and military, and will enable users to analyze the careers of these officials at both the individual and aggregate levels.

Creating a Federal Government continues my commitment to interdisciplinary inquiry.  Previous projects have connected the themes of history, literary criticism, and visual culture.  My current work seeks to bridge important gaps between history and political science, engaging questions in American political development, presidential history, and institutional behavior.

Publications

Books

William Clark's World: Describing America in an Age of Unknowns.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011.

The Nation's Crucible: The Louisiana Purchase and the Creation of America.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.

Edited Books

Editor. America's Struggle with Empire: A Documentary History.  Washington: CQ Press, 2009

Co-editor (with Francois Weil) Empires of the Imagination: Transatlantic Histories of the Louisiana Purchase.  Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009

The Louisiana Purchase: Emergence of an American Nation.  Washington: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2002.  Editor, author for introduction, and author for essay entitled "Dehahuit and the Question of Change in North America," 74-89.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

"What are the Advantages of the Acquisition?': Inventing Expansion in the Early American Republic."  American Quarterly 60 (2008): 1003-35.

"Sacagawea's 'Cold': Pregnancy and the Written Record of The Lewis and Clark Expedition."  Co-author with Conevery Valencius.  The Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82 (2008): 276-309.

"'Young Men and Strangers': Institutions, Collaborations, and Conflicts in Territorial Louisiana."  The Journal of the West 43 (2004): 23-32.

"'Motives of Peculiar Urgency': Local Diplomacy in Louisiana, 1803-1821."  The William and Mary Quarterly 3d. ser., 58 (2001): 819-48.

"'Equitable Rights and Privileges': The Divided Loyalties of Washington County, Virginia, During the Franklin Separatist Crisis." The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 105 (1997): 193-226.

"Toward 'The Maritime War Only': The Question of Naval Mobilization, 1811-1812." The Journal of Military History 61 (1997): 455-80.

Essays and Book Sections

"The Many Wests of Thomas Jefferson." In Seeing Jefferson Anew: In His Time and Ours. John M. Boles and Randal L. Hall, eds. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press: University of Virginia Press, 2010: 66-102.

"'Adapted to its Present System of Government': Legal Change, National Reorganization, and the Louisiana Civil Law Digest." Tulane European & Civil Law Forum, 24, (2009): 137-159.

"'Adapted to its Present System of Government': Legal Change, National Reorganization, and the Louisiana Civil Law Digest." Tulane European & Civil Law Forum, 24, (2009): 137-159.

"Writing a History for Exploration: What Became of Thomas Freeman and Peter Custis?"  In Freeman and Custis Red River Expedition of 1806: Two Hundred Years Later.  Lawrence M. Hardy, ed.  Bulletin of the Museum of Life Sciences XIV, Louisiana State University in Shreveport, 2008: 325-44.

"Guardians and Gatekeepers: Lewis and Clark and the Louisiana Purchase."  In Finding Lewis & Clark: Old Trails, New Directions.  James Ronda and Nancy Tystad Koupal, eds.  Pierre: South Dakota State Historical Society, 2004: 25-44.

"An Identity by Any Other Name: Attachments in an Age of Expansion."  In The Louisiana Purchase and its Peoples: Perspectives from the New Orleans Conference. Paul E. Hoffman, ed.  Lafayette: Louisiana Historical Society, 2004: 161-170.

"'Louisiana is Ours!': The Louisiana Purchase and the New Problems in American Foreign Policy, 1803-1815."  Selected Papers from the Consortium on Revolutionary Europe, Kyle O. Eidahl, Donald H. Howard, and John Severn, eds.  Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1998: 280-8.

Work in Progress

Creating a Federal Government, 1789-1829. Book project and digital archive currently under development.

"Mapping the Urban Frontier and Losing Frontier Cities." In Frontier CIties: Encounters at the Crossroads of Empire. Adam Arenson, Barbara Berglund, and Jay Gitlin, eds. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012: 165-89 (forthcoming).

Awards

Fellowships and Grants

Digital Innovation Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies (awarded in 2012, fellowship to begin in 2013).

Academic Venture Fund Grant (with Pietro Nivola), joint collaboration between Washington University and the Brookings Institution, 2011-2012.

Center Programs Grant (with Gayle Fritz), Washington University in St. Louis, 2007-2008.

Faculty Research Grant, Washington University in St. Louis, 2007.

Faculty Fellow, Washington University Center for the Humanities, 2006.

Archibald Hanna, Jr., Fellow, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, 2005-2006.

Fellowship in the History of Cartography, The Newberry Library, 2005-2006.

Faculty Research Grant, Weidenbaum Center on the Government, Policy, and Political Economy, Washington University in St. Louis, 2004-2005.

Society of the Cincinnati Research Fellowship, 1993.

DuPont Fellowship, 1992-93.

Awards and Prizes

Emerson Excellence in Teaching Award, 2011.

Honorable Mention, Single Volume Reference/Humanities & Social Sciences, Association of American Publishers, for America's Struggle with Empire: A Documentary History, 2011.

Kemper and Leila Williams Book Prize, Louisiana Historical Association/Historic New Orleans Collection, for The Nation's Crucible, 2005.

Caroline Bancroft Western History Prize honor book, sponsored by the Denver Public Library recognizing outstanding contributions to Western history, for The Nation's Crucible, 2005.

ArtSci Council Faculty Award, Washington University in St. Louis, 2002 and 2004.

Choice, Outstanding Academic Book Selection for The Louisiana Purchase: Emergence of an American Nation, 2003.

Arts & Sciences Freshman Advisor of the Year, Washington University in St. Louis, 2002.

Phi Alpha Theta Advisor Award, Washington University in St. Louis, 2001.

C. Coleman McGehee Prize, Virginia Historical Society, 1998.

Courses

"Americans and Their Presidents," American Culture Studies Graduate Program, Washington University in St. Louis, Spring 2008-Present.

"Proseminar: Introduction to Graduate Study of American History to 1865," Department of History, Washington University in St. Louis, Fall 2007-Present.

"Freedom, Citizenship, and the Making of American Life," Department of History, Washington University in St. Louis, Fall 2006-Present.

"Lewis and Clark and the Mantle of Accuracy," American Culture Studies Graduate Program, Washington University in St. Louis, Fall 2004.

"American Culture: Traditions, Methods, Visions," American Culture Studies Program, Washington University in St. Louis, Spring 2002-present.

"Sophomore Research in American Culture Studies," American Culture Studies Program, Washington University in St. Louis, Fall 2000-present.

"Graduate Colloquium in American Culture Studies," American Culture Studies Program, Washington University in St. Louis, Summer 2000.

"The American Frontier, 1776-1848," Department of History, Washington University in St. Louis, Spring 1999-present.

"Lewis and Clark and the American Challenge," American Culture Studies Program, Washington University in St. Louis, Fall 1998-2003.