杏吧性世界

My courses explore the history of the United States of America since the late nineteenth century, often by focusing on the U.S.'s dialectical relationships with the broader world and how these relationships shaped domestic political, social, and economic development. I build in course flexibility to accommodate learners of all types and offer students opportunities to take charge in pursuing and demonstrating their learning. My students have taken these opportunities to pursue original research on topics such as the gendered politics of U.S. military recruitment and military-supported Hollywood film, women's participation in skilled trades, strategies to address gender diversity in radiology practice, class, race, and gender in contemporary alternative history dramas, and viral internet representations of the Rust Belt. Drawing on my interdisciplinary background, I include elements of media and culture studies, political science, and sociology to make critical connections between history and the contemporary economic, political, and cultural issues that students might grapple with throughout their lives. In doing so, I seek to facilitate critical historical engagement that is impactful, fun, and useful for students, whatever their career interests.

My research focuses on U.S. foreign policy since World War II, with an emphasis on U.S. soft power (media, culture, civil society, diplomacy) as weapons of war in foreign interventions. I am currently working to publish my book manuscript, Make Democracy Safe for Empire: U.S. Democracy Promotion from the Cold War to the Twentyfirst Century. This project examines U.S. democracy promotion institutions as cultural producers and deep political players in global geopolitics, and specifically how these institutions used soft power to facilitate, justify, and obfuscate violence and criminality in key case studies across Latin America, Eastern Europe, and West Asia. Basically, if you're interested in learning about some of the most controversial episodes in U.S. foreign policy of the past fifty years, my work explores the art of beautifying callous geopolitical-economic self-interest through the powers of money, technology, institutions, aesthetics, and narrative. I have published several articles, most notably 鈥淪ave the Children, Launch the Bombs: Propaganda Agents Behind The White Helmets (2016) Documentary and Media Imperialism in the Syrian Civil War鈥� in The Projector (2022), and 鈥淭he Moderate Rebel Industry: Spaces of Western Public-Private Civil Society and Propaganda Warfare in the Syrian Civil War,鈥� in Media, War and Conflict (2024). My writings have also appeared in Covert Action Magazine and The Hampton Institute, as well as the books Propaganda, Communication, and Empire: Western Intervention in Afghanistan (2025, Routledge) and Punk Anarchy in Action! (forthcoming, PM Press).