Current Courses

Fall 2024

  • HIST 7990-002
    Continuing Regist-Ph D

Spring 2024

Professional Organizations

  • Mormon History Association. 01/01/2021 - present. Position : Member.
  • Mormon History Association. 06/08/2019 - 06/06/2020. Position : Past President.
  • Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society. 01/2018 - present. Position : Member.
  • Mormon History Association. 06/09/2017 - 06/09/2019. Position : President.
  • Western History Association. 07/01/2002 - present. Position : Member.
  • Utah State Historical Society. 07/01/1994 - present. Position : Member.

Courses I Teach

  • HIST 4660 - Utah History
    This course is designed to offer students a greater understanding of Utah, its peoples, and its history. As we discuss specific details of Utah history you should keep broad themes in mind. What does it mean to be a Utahn? Who is a Utahn? Has that definition changed over time? In this class we will view Utah as a meeting and mixing ground of diverse peoples from a variety of religious, cultural, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. We will seek to understand what brought these peoples together, what drove them apart, and what methods of accommodation, compromise, and/or conquest animated their exchanges. What has living in Utah meant for each group and how has that meaning changed over time? We will view the somewhat arbitrary geographic space we call Utah as an ongoing site for “Americanization”—a place where the nation worked out its definition of what it meant to be an American and frequently found various Utahns wanting. Native Americans, Mormons, “new pioneers” and other immigrant groups all experienced some form of Americanization at various periods in Utah history. We will seek to understand what that process meant for Utah, its peoples, and for the nation. In the story that emerges, we should never lose sight of fundamental lessons about the human condition that I believe the Utah experience helps to illustrate: how change takes place in the past, how we interpret the past and find meaning for the present, and how we interact with people who are different.

Teaching Projects

  • Utah Historical Markers. Project Lead: W. Paul Reeve. 01/09/2017 - present.