Lynn and Gary Mecklenburg Chair in Textiles, Material Culture, and Design, Professor Design Studies Department, University of Wisconsin

I am a cultural historian of the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I have particular interestings in material and visual culture; landscape and the built environment; business and consumption; and constructions of the middle class. My own academic background is in American Studies, and my approach to historical studies is interdisciplinary, especially drawing on the sources and methods of literature, cultural geography, and history of art. My current research examines the trade of seeds in nineteenth-century America, and the ways in which this exchange--commercial, cultural, and horticultural--contributed to the expansion of the United States.