Read more about my work

• Reenactment and living history
• The unfinished industrial past
• Food and farm history
• Public humanities

Education

• PhD, Interdisciplinary Doctorate Program, Tufts University, 2004 (Cultural Anthropology/US History/Museum and Heritage Studies)
• MA, Graduate Program, Vermont College of Norwich University, 1997 (Cultural Anthropology/US History/Performance Studies)
• BA, Adult Degree Program, Vermont College of Norwich University, 1994

Teaching and consulting

• 2021-present – Distinguished Senior Lecturer, Anthropology Department, Tufts University
• 2012-2021 – Senior Lecturer, Anthropology Department, Tufts University
• 2010-present – Consultant, food and farm history at museums and historic sites
• 2004-2012 – Lecturer, Anthropology Department, Tufts University
• 1998-2019 – Consultant, Northeast Region Ethnography Program, US National Park Service
• 2001-2012 – Affiliate Faculty, BA in Liberal Studies/Union Institute & University

Selected publications, reports, and conference presentations

• Food Margins: Lessons from an Unlikely Grocer (University of Massachusetts Press, 2024)

• “Heritage from the Outside In: Cultural Practice in an Already Changed Climate,” keynote address at “Industrial Heritage Reloaded” conference of the International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage, Montréal, Québec, August 2022

• “Feral Kittens and Growing Networks: Twenty-Five 41 Years of Digital NCPH” in Perspectives on the National Council on Public History on its 40^th Anniversary, digital publication (2021)

• “Foodshed as memoryscape: New England neo-agrarianism and the paradox of the working landscape” in Routledge Handbook of Memory and Place, Sarah De Nardi et al, eds. (Routledge, 2019)
• with Michelle Moon, “Food History,” The Inclusive Historian’s Handbook, American Association for State and Local History/National Council on Public History digital publication
• Panelist for “The Cities Project: New Life for New England’s Industrial Past,” International Festival of Arts & Ideas, June 2019, New Haven CT
• “A Place of Quiet Adventure: An Ethnographic Study of the Peddocks Island Cottages” (for Boston Harbor Islands National Park Area/National Park Service/Northeast Region Ethnography Program, 2019)
• “Displaying the industrial: Toward a geneaology of heritage labor” in Labor Volume 16, No 1, 151-70, March 2019 (Stefan Burger and Steven High, special issue eds)
• with Michelle Moon, Public History and the Food Movement: Adding the Missing Ingredient (Routledge, 2018)
• “Farming in the Sweet Spot: Integrating Interpretation, Preservation, and Food Production at National Parks” in The George Wright Forum, Vol 34, No 3 (Dec 2017), pp 275-284.
• “Reenactment: Performing the Past” in Seth C. Bruggeman, ed., Commemoration: The American Association of State and Local History Guide (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017)
• A Quabbin Farm Album (Haley’s)
• “Keeping ‘the Industrial’: New Solidarities in Post-industrial Places” in The Deindustrialized World: Confronting Ruination in Postindustrial Places, Steven High, Lachlan MacKinnon and Andrew Perchard, eds. (University of British Columbia Press, 2017)
• “Between Pastness and Presentism: Public History and the Local Food Movement” in The Oxford Handbook of Public History, James Gardner and Paula Hamilton, eds. (Oxford University Press, 2017)
• “This Land is Your Land: Parks and Public Spaces,” digital project review, The Public Historian, Vol 38, No 4 (November 2016), 324-26
• “More Than Just Inclusion: Race, Memory, and Twenty-First Century Cultural Industries,” review essay, American Quarterly, Vol 68, No 3 (September 2016), pp 815-22
• with Denise D. Meringolo, ““Monuments, Memorials, and Politics” entry in Encyclopedia of American Political Culture (ABC-Clio, 2015)
• with Michelle Moon, “The First Course: A Case for Locating Public History within ‘The Food Movement,’” The Public Historian, Vol 36, No 3 (August 2014), pp 109-29
• “Deep Roots or Youthful Indiscretion? Locating Activism within Public History,” keynote address, “From Engagement to Activism: Public History as Civic Responsibility” conference, North Carolina State University, April 2014
• Editor, “Public History in a Changing Climate,” digital publication of the National Council on Public History, March 2014
• “Why We Need ‘the Industrial’: Toward a Broader Perspective on Resistance in Postindustrial Places,” keynote address, “Deindustrialization and Its Aftermath: Class, Culture and Resistance international conference, Concordia University, Montréal, May 2014
• “How Can Civil War Sites Offer a Usable Past during a Time of War?” Keynote address, The Future of Civil War History: Looking Beyond the 150th conference, Gettysburg, PA, March 2013
• “From Sustenance to Relevance: Reinterpreting Food, Place, and Local History” panel, American Association for State and Local History conference (October 2012)
• “Plant Yourself in My Neighborhood”: An Ethnographic Landscape Study of Farming and Farmers in Columbia County, New York” (for Martin Van Buren National Historic Site/National Park Service/Northeast Region Ethnography Program, 2012)
• Review of Enacting History, Scott Magelseen and Rhona Justice-Malloy, eds., Journal of American History, Vol 99, No 3 (Dec 2012), pp 884-5
• “Re-Occupying Plimoth,” Plenary session remarks, New England American Studies Association conference, Plymouth, MA (November 2011)
• Review of “Tangible Things” exhibit, Journal of American History (December 2011)
• “When Polonia met Americana: Polish Americans in Salem, Massachusetts,” Polish American Historical Association/American Historical Association conference, Boston, MA (Jan. 2010)
• Review of Edward Slavishak, Bodies of Work: Civic Display and Labor in Industrial Pittsburgh, Anthropology of Work Review, Vol 31 No. 2 (Fall 2010)
• Review of John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, The Public Historian, Vol 31, No 4 (Fall 2009)
• Review of Andrew Dolkart, Biography of a Tenement House in New York City: An Architectural History of 97 Orchard Street for H-Urban (August 2009)
• with Jane Becker, “In the Heart of Polish Salem: An Ethnohistorical Study of St. Joseph Hall and Its Neighborhood.” Special Ethnographic Study produced for Northeast Ethnography Program, National Park Service and Salem Maritime National Historic Site
• “Driven to the Past: History in a Changing Climate,” Keynote address, Mass.History conference “With Power for All: Energy and Social Change in Massachusetts” (June 2009)
• “The Past as a Public Good: The U.S. National Park Service and ‘Cultural Repair’ in Postindustrial Places” in People and Their Pasts: Public History Today, Hilda Kean and Paul Ashton, eds. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
• “Performing the Postindustrial: The Limits of Radical History in Lowell, Massachusetts,” Radical History Review Vol 98 (Spring 2007)
• The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a Postindustrial City (University of Massachusetts Press, 2006)
• with Myrna Breitbart, “Touring Templates: Cultural Workers and Regeneration in Small New England Cities.” In Tourism, Culture and Regeneration, Melanie K. Smith, ed. (CAB International, 2006)
• “Cultures in Flux: New Approaches to ‘Traditional Association’ at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site.” Ethnographic Overview and Assessement produced for Northeast Ethnography Program, National Park Service.
• “Serving Up Culture: Heritage and its Discontents at an Industrial History Site,” International Journal of Heritage Studies, Vol 11, Dec 2005
• “Outside the Frame: Assessing Partnerships between Arts and Historical Institutions,” The Public Historian, winter 2005
• with Stephen Belyea, “‘Their Time Will Yet Come’: The African American Presence in Civil War Reenactment” in Hope and Glory: Essays on the Legacy of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, Martin Blatt, Tom Brown, Donald Yacovone, eds. (University of Massachusetts Press, 2001)
• “Historians and the Web,” review essay, The Public Historian Vol 23, No1 (2001), pp 119-25
• “Battle Road 2000,” review article, Journal of American History Vol 87, No 3 (2000), pp 992-5

Awards

• “Teaching with Technology” award, Tufts University, 2013
• Excellence in Consulting Award from the National Council on Public History for “Plant Yourself in My Neighborhood: An Ethnographic Landscape Study of Farming and Farmers in Columbia County, New York (2013)
• National Council on Public History book award for The Lowell Experiment: Public History in a Postindustrial City (2007)
• Honorable mention, Alliance for Community Media, for documentary video “An Evening with Howard Zinn,” 2004
• Graduate student paper award, Northeastern Anthropological Association, 2003
• Finalist, Judge’s Special Merit Award, Alliance for Community Media, for documentary video “Music for the People: The Life and Times of the Orange Community Band,” 1998