This interdisciplinary course introduces students to key landmarks in the visual history of environmentalism from the 18th century to the recent past across a variety of linked geographic regions focusing both on images of nature and on the nature of images.
This seminar introduces students to major developments in the legal history of photography in transatlantic society, from the first law cases involving photography in 1840 to contemporary legal debates about such topics as cameras in the courtroom, sexting, surveillance, photographing police, dash cam and body cam videos, and more.
Drawing on a wide range of primary and selected secondary sources, this course surveys major developments in modern British history and empire from 1688 to the recent past.
“Guns, Germs, and Public History: A Conversation with Jennifer Tucker,” Interview by David Serlin, in Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 57 (1) Special Issue: Going Public: Mobilizing, Materializing, and Contesting Social Science History, ed. Alexandra Rutherford (Winter 2021).[Published online on July 7, 2020] [Free to read at Read more…
In this roundtable forum, published in The American Historical Review (4 Jan. 2022), I convened five scholars to discuss the collected essays in Ambivalent: Photography and Visibility in African History (2019). Matthew Fox-Amato studies how powerful photographs can be as evidence when combined with other kinds of sources such as Read more…
Long before the numbing regularity of school shootings, the Kyle Rittenhouse trial and the current Supreme Court debate over whether to further relax gun laws, composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim was sounding the alarm about the role of guns in American culture. Sondheim, who died on Nov. 26, 2021, had Read more…
Wax figures have been around for centuries and were very popular around the western world prior to mass media. I was interviewed on the Jobsolete podcast (iHeartRadio) about the wax sculptors who brought celebrities and others to life. “Wax was used over the centuries… for death masks, for making wax Read more…
In this opinion piece co-authored with Peter Rutland, I reflect on the National Archives’ censoring of the messages on protest signs in a photo taken at the Women’s March in January 2017. This action was swiftly and universally condemned by professional historians and curators. It both transpired in our era Read more…
I was interviewed on Wyoming Public Media about the opening of the newly renovated Cody Firearms Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, which tells the story of the role of firearms in American culture. I was among the academic historians enlisted by the museum to provide important Read more…
