As a professor of history at Oregon State University, I teach women’s history, lesbian and gay history, the history of popular music, and the history of psychotherapy. My first book, Settlement Folk: Social Thought and the American Settlement Movement, 1885-1930 (1990), explored the group of young women and men who decided at the turn of the century that their privileged lives were meaningless without some vital connection to the roiling city neighborhoods that seemed to be defining the American future. My second book, Girls Rock! (2004), coauthored with the remarkable Tisa Lewis and Susan Shaw, used the voices of women musicians to narrate their brave and stubborn inroads into the male-defined world of rock music. My most recent book, Ava Helen Pauling: Partner, Activist, Visionary (2013), continues my fascination with women who do things against all odds. Ava Helen Pauling, wife of Linus Pauling, was a housewife who partnered with her famous husband to advocate world peace by challenging United States nuclear weapons policies after World War II.

Somewhat narcissistically, I like to write the histories of things that I do. I’m a songwriter and guitar player, member of two Corvallis bands, RiverRocks and Keltocalypse. I am also a passionate, let us not say obsessed, photographer: thus this blog.

I’ve got two beautiful kids, one of whom took this portrait photo.