Research Interests

My research programme reflects my interests and training in Canadian and U.S. regional, rural, and gender history for the 19th to 20th centuries. Life as a poet as well as experience and engagement with work of international and literary concern in the disciplines of history and literature/cultural studies means also that creative activity is a significant part of my life as an academic.
 
My current roster of projects include comparative research on Nova Scotia and West Virginia rural women’s home-based health knowledge and its links with nature, cooking, and culture (see Publications), rural women’s volunteerism (see H.U.G.S. Project Link), rural women’s leisure and rural community identity in the context of rural resilience and change (see WHIRC Project Link) and rural, working-class masculinity (see Publications).  I am presently completing a book manuscript drawing together the unpublished remains of my doctoral thesis, "Contexts and Identities: Martin Butler, Masculinity, Class and Rural Identity, the Maine-New Brunswick Borderlands, 1857-1915," and published works examining the gender and class dimensions of rural childhood, anti-imperialism and gender identity, and rural, working-class masculinity in the context of the North American sole leather tanning industry (see Publications).