At Northern, I have enjoyed teaching a wide variety of history classes with the only common denominator being their focus on the history of the last two hundred years. I see myself as an historian of the modern era -- meaning history since the Industrial Revolution transformed almost everything in society. I am fascinated by how this transformation occurred in the U.S., in Europe, and in Asia and Africa. I am particularly interested in how this process we call modernization has profoundly altered the role of women and the function of the family, so I teach a lot of courses in women's and family history. And I am interested in particular times and places where the impact of modernization has been most dramatic, which is why I teach courses on modern Russian history, the First World War, the Vietnam War, the 1960s and the Third World since 1945.

     Since completing my dissertation, I have done research on World War One and women's history, but my chief research project at the moment is completing a manuscript tentatively titled Walking Tours Through London's History, a kind of unique guidebook which includes narrative chapters for each era of London's history coupled with detailed walking tours of sections of the city that best illustrate the aspects of that era's history. I have accumulated the knowledge on which this is based by studying and teaching in London at intervals over the past decades.

     Since I spent such a formative period of my life as a student in the British Isles and benefitted enormously from my junior year abroad in Scotland, I am an enthusiastic proponent of overseas travel/study programs. I began leading students to Britain in 1981, and since 1982, I have been a board member and frequent teacher in the Cooperative Center for Study Abroad (CCSA), a consortium of colleges and universities with headquarters here at NKU that sponsors short-term and long-term academic programs in various English-speaking countries. I have taught the History of London in the CCSA London Summer program on seven different occasions and served as a director of various CCSA programs in London, Britain, Ireland, and Australia.

     My hobbies include travel (obviously!), but I also take recreational pleasure in cooking and gardening. My family is scattered around the U.S., and my grown sons live at opposite ends of the earth -- one is in the Navy stationed in Guam while the other is a lawyer working in Sarajevo on legal aspects of the refugee problem in post-war Bosnia. Partly to keep up on news that might affect my sons' well-being, I am a current events junkie who struggles to cope with the flow of information coming at me through National Public Radio, the newspapers and magazines to which I subscribe, and the internet sites that cram my bookmarks list. Days are never long enough to do justice to all my interests and responsibilities, but I have never doubted that the academic life was what I'm best suited for, and I continue to enjoy teaching, interacting with students, and being part of a vibrant academic community as much as on the first day I walked into the job at Northern.

     Since August of 2001, I have been serving as the chair of the History & Geography Department, a responsibility that takes me away from teaching more than I want but that allows me to assist students and colleagues in maximizing their opportunities for achievement at NKU. I look forward, though, to the day I return to the classroom where I feel most at home.