Towson University, Towson, Md.
Professor, 2018-Present
Associate Professor, 2013-2018
Director of American Studies, 2013-present
Assistant Professor, 2007-2013
Colgate University, Hamilton, N.Y.
Visiting Assistant Professor of History, 2006-7
Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Penn.
Visiting Assistant Professor of History, 2005-6
Administrative Experience
Towson University, Towson, Md.
Chairperson of the History Department, Fall 2018-Present
Co-Director of Unearthing TU’s History, 2019-Present
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- Co-founder and director of project to uncover, understand, and explain the history and experience of race, racism, and diversity at Towson University
- Conducted archival research and oral histories
- Hired, oversaw, and mentored student researchers
- Produced community-facing resources to enable users to understand Towson University’s past
Acting Chairperson of the History Department, Fall 2017
Director of American Studies, 2013-2018
Education
Ph.D. History University of Delaware, 2005
M.A. History University of Delaware, 2001
B.A. History and Economics University of Virginia, 1999
Fields of Specialization
Primary Fields: United States History, Colonial Era to Present
Secondary Field: The Atlantic World, Economy and Culture, 1500-1800
Publications
Books
A Biography of a Map in Motion: Augustine Herrman’s Chesapeake (New York University Press, 2018)
Empire at the Periphery: British Colonists, Anglo-Dutch Trade, and the Development of the British Atlantic, 1621-1713 (New York University Press: Early American Places Book Series, 2011; paperback 2015).
Peer Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters
“Imagining the West Indies: An Early English Map of Montserrat,” Winterthur Portfolio, 53, 1 (Spring, 2019), 3-39.
“Anglo-Dutch Trade in the Chesapeake and the British Caribbean, 1621-1733,” in Gert Oostindie & Jessica Roitman, ed., Dutch Atlantic Connections, 1680-1800: Networks and Nodal Points (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 72-102.
“Spanning the Peninsula: Augustine Herrman, the South River, and Anglo-Dutch overland trade in the Northern Chesapeake,” De Halve Maen: Journal of the Holland Society of New York, 84 (Winter 2011), 61-68.
“The Merchant, the Map, and Empire: Augustine Herrman’s Chesapeake and Interimperial Trade, 1644-1673,” William and Mary Quarterly, 67, 4 (October 2010), 603-44.
“A ‘Dangerous Principle’: Free Trade Discourses in Barbados and the English Leeward Islands, 1650-1689,” Early American Studies, 5, 1 (Spring 2007), 132-63.
“Constructing the Empire: English Governors and Inter-Imperial Trade in New York and the Leeward Islands, 1621-1689,” Itinerario, 31, 1 (2007), 35-60.
“An Adaptive Presence: the Dutch role in the English Caribbean before and after the ‘fall’ of Dutch Brazil,” De Halve Maen: Journal of the Holland Society of New York, 78, 4 (Winter 2005), 69-76.
Invited Pieces
“Smuggling in Early America,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia: American History. January 2016.
“Balancing Center and Periphery,” in the Forum: “Rethinking Mercantilism” William and Mary Quarterly, 69, 2 (January 2012), 41-46.
“The Social History of the Atlantic world, 1500-1800,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of America Social History, Editor in Chief, Lynn Dumenil, 2011.
Recent Book Reviews
Jonathan Scott. How the Old World Ended: The Anglo-Dutch-American Revolution, 1500-1800 in The Journal of British Studies, 49. 4 (2020), 914-16.
“More than Just illustrations: the Cartographic Turn in Early American History,” review essay of S. Max Edelson, The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America Before Independenceand Martin Brückner, The Social Life of Maps in America, 1750-1860 in Reviews in American History, 47, 1 (March 2019), 17-23.
Wim Klooster, The Dutch Moment: War, Trade, and Settlement in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic Worldin The American Historical Review, 123, 1 (2018), 187-188.
Benjamin Schmidt, Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe’s Early Modern World in The Journal of Early Modern History, 19 (2015), 579-81.
Donna Merwick, Stuyvesant Bound: An Essay on Loss Across Time in American Historical Review, 119, 4 (2014), 1250-51.
Mark Meuwese, Brothers in Arms, Partners in Trade: Dutch-Indigenous Alliances in the Atlantic World, 1595-1674 in The Journal of Early American History, 4, 3 (2014), 274-76.
Peter Andreas, Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America in Political Science Quarterly, 129, 2 (2014), 354-55.
Linda M. Rupert, Creolization and Contraband: Curacao in the Early Modern Atlantic World, in The American Historical Review, 118, 3 (2013): 900-901.
James D. Drake, The Nation’s Nature: How Continental Presumptions Gave Rise to the United States of America (2011), in The Journal of Southern History, 79, 1 (2013), 146-47.
Buddy Levy. River of Darkness: Francisco Orellana’s Legendary Voyage of Death and Discovery Down the Amazon. (2011), in The Historian, 65, 1 (2013), 162-63.
Michael J. Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783 (2010), in The William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 69, 3 (2012), 862-65.
Daniel K. Richter, Before the Revolution: America’s Ancient Pasts (2011), in Common-place. The Interactive Journal of Early American Life, at common-place.org, June 2012.
Alison Games, The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560-1660 (2008), in Social History, 34, 4 (2009), 485-87.
Recent Fellowships and Grants Received
- College of Liberal Arts Faculty Research Grant, Towson University, 2017
- Faculty Development and Research Committee Grant, Towson University, 2014-15
- NEH Research Fellowship, Winterthur Museum and Library, Winterthur, Delaware, 2011
- Jeannette D. Black Memorial Research Fellowship, John Carter Brown Library, Providence, 2011
- Faculty Development and Research Committee Summer Research Fellowship, Towson University, 2009
Recent Presentations
2021
“Mapping the Colonial Chesapeake,” Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) Summer Program, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
2019
“Malleable Lines: Borders on Early Modern Maps,” Lines on a Map, British Library, London, Eng.
“Things to Think With: The Use of Borders on Early Modern Maps of the British Atlantic,” The Power of Maps and the Politics of Borders,” American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia, Penn.
“Things to Think With: The Use of Borders on Early Modern Maps of the British Atlantic,” The Power of Maps and the Politics of Borders,” American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia, Penn.
2018
“Things to Think With: The Use of Borders on Seventeenth-Century Maps of the British Atlantic,” Geographies of Power Workshop, Philadelphia, Penn.
“A Biography of a Map in Motion: Augustine Herrman’s Chesapeake,” Washington Map Society, Library of Congress, Washington, DC
2017
“Imagining the West Indies: An Early English Map of Montserrat,” British Group in Early American Studies 2017 Annual Meeting, Portsmouth, England
“Between Local and Imperial: Manuscript and Printed Maps of the British West Indies,” 48thAnnual Meeting for the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies, Minneapolis, Minn.
2016
“An Apparatus of Empire: The Consumption of an Early Modern Atlantic Map,” 22nd Annual Omohundro Institute Conference, Worcester, Mass.
2015
“From Manuscript to Print: The Transformation of an Early Modern Atlantic Map” sabbatical presentation, Towson University, Towson, Md.
2014
“From Manuscript to Print: The Transformation of an Early Modern Atlantic Map,” 45th Annual Meeting for the American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies, Williamsburg, Va.
2013
“Mapping Delaware in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” Common Destinations: maps and the American Experience, Winterthur Museum, Gardens, & Library, Winterthur, Del.
2012
“Reimagining the Chesapeake: Augustine Herrman, Local Mapmaking, and Imperial Geographies in the late seventeenth century,” Washington Area Early American Seminar, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland
“The Dutch and the Making of the British Atlantic, 1621-1733,” Dutch Atlantic Connections, ca. 1680-1800, KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute for Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, Leiden, Netherlands