I came to JMU in the fall of 2001 after serving as an associate and an assistant professor at Purdue University, a visiting assistant professor at Indiana University (where I earlier completed a year of postdoctoral work), and an assistant professor/associate director at Old Dominion University.

My research focuses on media history, specifically the response of the liberal southern press to racial, gender, and labor issues in the first half of the twentieth century. I've written two biographies of Pulitzer prize-winning newspaper editors (Standing Before the Shouting Mob: Lenoir Chambers and Virginia's Massive Resistance to Public-School Integration, University of Alabama Press and Editor for Justice: The Life of Louis I. Jaffé, Louisiana State University Press). In late 2009 I published a biography of Nell Battle Lewis, the South's most important female journalist in the 1920s (Battling Nell: The Life of Southern Journalist Cornelia Battle Lewis, 1893-1956, Louisiana State University Press).

I recently completed two articles focusing on journalism and on racial violence in central Appalachia. In winter 2010 Appalachian Journal published "'Never Thot This Could Happen in the South!' The Antilynching Advocacy of Appalachian Newspaper Editor Bruce Crawford." I've submitted "Searching for Geraldine: The Descendants of a Lynching Victim Seek to Uncover Their Family's Tragic Past" for publication. (I had two coauthors on the latter piece: Anthony Quinn and John M. Johnson.)

I am currently researching an article that will focus on the journalistic advocacy associated with the desegregation of the University of Virginia.

Prior to becoming a professor, I worked for a dozen years as a media writer and director for an advertising agency, corporations, and educational institutions. I won a number of awards for my work, including a Gold Medal from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and a Crystal Award from the Association for Educational Communications and Technology for the U.S.A./U.S.S.R. Youth Summit Series, three television programs focusing on the lives of Soviet and American teenagers. PBS and the Soviet Union’s largest television network aired the series.

Teaching Interests: Media history and criticism of commercial media industries

Research Interests: History of the southern and Appalachian press