Since 1999, I have been teaching courses in cultural and educational history that explore how gender roles, slavery, technology, and social justice movements have shaped institutions and individuals in North America. Lately, I have been writing and giving talks exploring the educational value of generative AI, how it is changing education, and what we should do about it.

For nearly two decades, my day job was at the University of Pennsylvania where I led university-wide projects to implement academic information systems for course evaluation, curriculum management, graduate admissions, learning management, and student records. Being a bureaucrat shaped how I think about technology in ways that are important to my writing and teaching.

Before Penn, I worked at Rutgers University as an academic advisor, taught first-year writing courses, served a year as a visiting assistant professor of American Studies, directed a program for Japanese students studying in the US, and pursued—and received, although it was a close call—a PhD in American History.

Before that, I lived in Athens, Ga, where I thought about writing novels or maybe for the movies. While there, I attended classes at UGA long enough that I earned a BA in comparative literature. On several occasions, I drank coffee sitting near Michael Stipe but never talked to him. I did talk to Bill Berry and Mike Mills once, though, hanging out in the back alley of the Georgia Bar.

I grew up in Augusta, GA, known as the birthplace of James Brown and the home of the Masters Golf Tournament, where my dad and my grandfather both worked one week out of each year as scoreboard operators.