I am presently a History PhD candidate at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln studying nineteenth-century reform politics, American populisms, and economic history. I am also an aspiring Digital Humanist interested in A.I., machine learning, and software development.
My primary interest is in the economic, social, and political ideas of the Populists, a group of farmers and laborers that came together and fought Gilded Age capitalism in the late nineteenth century. They contested several presidential elections as The People’s Party and elected numerous Senators and Congressmen. The Populists were an interesting bunch. Like today’s populists, they made some important critiques of their contemporary world, but they also held some very upsetting nativist and, sometimes, racist ideas.
More than anything, I am preoccupied with understanding the economic reform ideas of the Populists and how they thought the capitalist system should work. Certainly, our own modern neo-liberal capitalist system was not the inevitable result of economic development. The Populists believed that capitalism could exist without being driven by the needs of individuals.
October 2024
It was great to be in Kansas City for the recent Western Historical Association Conference. I am incredible fortunate to who been allowed to join and contribute to the Digital Scholarship and Teaching and Learning Committees.
It was my pleasure to give a presentation on the uses of Obsidian as a digital humanities tool at the 2024 Rawley Conference at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The talk focused on how to use Obsidian for Comprehensive Exam prep, which I finished the previous month. Thanks to all who joined us!
May 2024
I completed a mock-up/prototype of my forthcoming digital humanities project, based on my in-progress dissertation. It will be focused on mapping — both GIS and network visualizations — the life and work of Alonzo Wardall, a major Populist organizer, the principal subject of my doctoral work. I hope to have a working version available here by fall 2025.
January 2023
I presented the start of a digital project at the American Historical Association Digital History Lightning Round.
I presented a proof of concept project I’m working on that uses R and PowerBi to analyze keywords present in the Populists’ political platforms. Though counting words is undoubtedly insufficient to determine precisely what a political movement was concerned with, it can indicate areas of focus. It is a snapshot of what they thought their interests were at a given time.
I hope to leverage similar modeling in the future using a great deal more data from Populist newspapers to compare the economic ideas of the Northern (Plains and West) to the Southern movement. I am interested to try and discover the differences between how the two sections of the country thought of economic reform.
The results of the POC are below. Visuals were created in PowerBi Desktop, a free tool that I enjoy using to experiment with visualizations quickly and easily.
