Biography

I am the Wepner Distinguished Professor of Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield. My scholarship has focused on antebellum Illinois, and particularly on the careers of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas. I have published three essays on Lincoln and Douglas in the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, an essay on the early Illinois Republican Party in the Journal of Illinois History, and an essay on the antebellum party system in Practicing Democracy (2015). My book, Making an Antislavery Nation:  Lincoln, Douglas, and the Battle over Freedom, published by the University of Illinois Press in the fall of 2017, received the 2018 Russell P. Strange Memorial Book of the Year Award from the Illinois State Historical Society and was a finalist for the 2018 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize.
 
I have also written, directed, and produced two films with art professor Nathan Peck. Stephen A. Douglas and the Fate of American Democracy is a feature-length biographic film of Douglas. The film features performances by nationally distinguished Douglas and Lincoln reenactors, interviews with five historians of the Civil War, and hundreds of nineteenth-century images, including photographs of rare, archival documents from the Douglas Papers at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center. Lincoln & Douglas: Touring Illinois in Turbulent Times is a travel film that Nathan and I created during the Covid summer of 2020. We visited four of Illinois’ Lincoln-Douglas debate sites to capture performances by Lincoln and Douglas reenactors. But the turbulent social and political climate that summer soon changed the focus of the film. Black Lives Matter protestors were inspiring demonstrators around the globe to pull down statues of controversial historical figures. In Springfield, Illinois, they petitioned for the removal of a Douglas statue on the grounds of the State Capitol. Spurred by these issues, the film pivoted to interrogating the contemporary legacies of Lincoln and Douglas in light of the challenges to American democracy then taking shape. Both films are freely available for streaming on this website.

I most recently have co-directed an art residency and exhibit interpreting Lincoln’s legacies with my colleagues Brytton Bjorngaard and Meghan Kessler. The project, Making Our History: Artists Render Lincoln’s Legacies, brought together 20 Illinois artists via Zoom to make original art on Lincoln’s contemporary legacies. The art has been exhibited in Springfield, Chicago, and DeKalb, Illinois. The permanent digital exhibit includes photos of the art, twenty professionally produced videos showcasing each artist’s methods and conceptual approach, twenty short essays providing historical context for the artworks, and three innovative K-12 teacher education modules that bring together history and art for the classroom.

I am a Californian by birth, and a first-generation American, raised by parents who immigrated from England in the early 1960s. I received my B.A. in History from California State University, Hayward (now CSU East Bay) before journeying to the land of Lincoln, where I earned my M.A. and Ph.D. in American History from Northwestern University. I spent a year at Rhodes College in Memphis and seventeen years at Saint Xavier University in Chicago before coming to UIS in 2019. I live in Springfield with my wife and two daughters, and with echoes of Lincoln and American history everywhere present.

I would be delighted to hear from you via email.