I am a historian of the post-1865 United States. I’m particularly interested in digital popular culture, political economy, transnational history, agriculture, and the US South. As a writer and teacher, I hope to make serious history accessible and relevant to a diversity of audiences.

My most recent book is Red Dead’s History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America’s Violent Past (St. Martin’s Press / Macmillan, 2024). The book turns a spotlight on the recent Red Dead Redemption video games, the most-played digital renditions of American history since The Oregon Trail. Weaving the games’ plot and characters into an exploration of American violence between 1870 and 1920, the book shows that it was more often disputes over capitalism and race, not just poker games and bank robberies, that fueled the bloodshed of these turbulent years. From the West to the Deep South to Appalachia, the book seeks to reveal the gritty world that inspired the games, but sometimes lacks context and complexity on the digital screen. Aimed at video gamers and historians alike, the book was inspired by my recent experimental undergraduate class. Fans of the game might be enthused to learn that the audiobook version of Red Dead’s History is narrated by actor Roger Clark, who played Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption II.

My first book, Agrarian Crossings: Reformers and the Remaking of the US and Mexican Countryside (Princeton University Press, 2017), sought to dismantle the artificial boundaries that can divide American and Latin American history. It examined the 1930s and 1940s, when rural reformers in the United States and Mexico waged unprecedented campaigns to remake their countrysides in the name of agrarian justice and agricultural productivity. Agrarian Crossings was the recipient of five awards, including the Bernath Book Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, the Tomassini Book Award from the Latin American Studies Association, and the Saloutos Book Prize from the Agricultural History Society.

I am now working on a public-facing book that will use a popular video game franchise to narrate the political and economic transformations that remade America since the 1970s. Next, I will be writing about the global travels of American country music during the Cold War and in the decades since.

My work has been featured in outlets such as the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Wall Street Journal, C-SPAN, IGN, and The History Channel. I’ve been fortunate to receive funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, the Miller Center for Public Affairs, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, among others.

At the University of Tennessee, I teach courses on history in video games, food and agriculture, the US South, and US and Latin American social and political history. I welcome graduate applications in those fields.

Selected Publications

Red Dead’s History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America’s Violent Past (St. Martin’s Press / Macmillan, 2024)

“Violence, Power, and American History in Video Games,” American Historical Review 128, no. 4 (December 2023)

“The South in the World: A Review Essay,” Journal of Southern History 87, no. 1 (Spring 2021)

“Transplanting el Tenesí: Mexican Planners in the US South during the Cold War Era,” in Andra Chastain and Timothy Lorek, eds., Itineraries of Expertise: Science, Technology, and Environment in Latin America’s Long Cold War (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020)

Agrarian Crossings: Reformers and the Remaking of the US and Mexican Countryside (Princeton University Press, 2017)

“Sharecroppers and Campesinos: The American South, Mexico, and the Transnational Politics of Land Reform in the Radical 1930s,” Journal of Southern History 81, no. 3 (August 2015)

“Peeling Back the Layers: Vidalia Onions and the Making of a Global Agribusiness,” Enterprise & Society 13, no. 4 (December 2012)

“Your DeKalb Farmers Market: Food and Ethnicity in Atlanta,” Southern Cultures 13, no. 4 (Winter 2007)