Associate Professor
Biography
Education
- B.A. University of California, Riverside, 1996
- M.A. University of California, Santa Barbara, 2000
- PhD University of California, Santa Barbara, 2006
Research and teaching interests
- Twentieth century U.S. political, cultural, and diplomatic history
Courses taught
- HIST 200: History and Film
- HIST 220: The Vietnam War
- HIST 257: The United States through the Civil War Era
- HIST 258: The United States since the Civil War Era
- HIST 315: U.S. and the World
- HIST 422: Special Topics in History: Secret History: Inside the FBI
- HIST 632: Graduate reading seminar in American history
- HIST 633: Graduate research seminar in American history
Key Areas of Graduate Supervision
- Modern U.S. history, with special focus on the Cold War period
Recent publications
- "Reagan’s Early Years: From Dixon to Hollywood" in A Companion to Ronald Reagan (Blackwell Companions to American History), edited by Andrew Johns (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015).
- J. Edgar Hoover Goes to the Movies: The FBI and the Origins of Hollywood’s Cold War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012).
- “The ‘Maltz Affair’ Revisited: How the American Communist Party Relinquished its Cultural Influence at the Dawn of the Cold War,” Cold War History Vol. 9, No. 4 (2009): pages 489-500.
- “Brassbound G-Men and Celluloid Reds: The FBI’s Search for Communist Propaganda in Wartime Hollywood,”Film History Vol. 20, No. 4 (2008): pages 412-436.
- “The Emergence of McCarthyism,” in History in Dispute, Volume 19: The Red Scare after 1945, edited by Robbie Lieberman (St. James Press, 2004).
- “Booting a Tramp: Charlie Chaplin, the FBI, and the Construction of the Subversive Image in Red Scare America” (with Tony Shaw) Pacific Historical Review Vol. 72, No. 4 (2003): pages 495-530.