My first career was in journalism, and I was fortunate to be a reporter on a newspaper staff that won the Pulitzer Prize — the Fort Wayne (Ind.) News-Sentinel, in 1983. I moved to Philadelphia to work for the Inquirer, where I was an editor for local Neighbors sections and on the National Desk. While there, I began taking graduate courses at the University of Pennsylvania, and the rest is, well, history.
“History Through Discovery” is my approach to teaching, research, and service through public history. I served as director of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) at Rutgers-Camden between 2010 and 2023, and I initiated two ongoing public history research projects: Learning From Cooper Street and The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. My fields of graduate training are U.S. culture and material culture, nineteenth and twentieth centuries; U.S. social and political history, 1820s-1880s; U.S. popular culture, twentieth century; and world history (teaching and major themes). I also do research and teach courses in public history and urban and suburban history.
My ongoing work includes historical consulting and free-lance tour-guiding in Center City Philadelphia and Camden’s Cooper Street Historic District.
Projects and books:
- Greater Philadelphia and the Nation, co-edited with Jean R. Soderlund, forthcoming 2026.
- Learning From Cooper Street digital archive and project blog.
- Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia
- Capital of the World: The Race to Host the United Nations (companion website with teaching guides, document links, and blog)
- Independence Hall in American Memory (companion website with teaching and staff development guides, case studies, and documents). New edition forthcoming 2026.
Ph.D., Temple University (History); Master of Liberal Arts, University of Pennsylvania; Bachelor of Science, Ball State University (Journalism and Political Science).
Certified Tour Guide, Association of Philadelphia Tour Guides.
Continuing Education Certificate in Historic Preservation, Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH) at Rutgers-Camden.