Denver goes to the movies: engaging national-scale identity shifts from movie house to movie palace, 1900-1940

2012 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.This thesis examines the relationship between film history and movie theater architecture at local and national levels as a window into early twentieth century identity shifts. The argument is that Denver films and movie theaters from 1900 to 1940 manifested national-level identity shifts as well as influenced them. The identity shifts included attitudes of innovation, decadence, and endurance that roughly characterized the 1900s and 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. These identities represented the dominant identities that were part of the broad shift from nineteenth century frontier identity to post-WWII modern identity. This thesis draws from Denver newspapers, architectural and cinema journals, early film histories, Denver Householder and City Directories, Denver Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, other historic maps, memoirs, and photographs. Through close study of these sources and balancing the national history with Denver history, there emerges a story of how Denverites and Americans have selected ideals to maintain and adopted others as they chase their ever-changing dreams

Chapter 7- Learning Beyond Content: Using Weekly Reflection to Promote Student Confidence and Lifelong Learning

During an intake survey in my introductory-level history courses, my students select from a series of answers to respond to the question, “What do YOU believe are the goals of a college-level history class (select ALL that apply)?” The possible answers are “teach information about people, places, and events in the past,” “teach critical thinking skills,” “practice oral communication,” “practice written communication,” “memorize lists of dates and facts,” and “expose students to diverse points of view.” I have used this question as part of a pre-course assessment since fall 2021. The top three answers, which 70% (or more) of the students select as course goals, are “teach information about people, places, and events in the past,” “teach critical thinking skills,” and “expose students to diverse points of view.” Coincidentally, these are some of my goals in teaching the course as well, and I developed a low-stakes reflective writing assignment that has increased student confidence and provided students with the transferable skill of taking initiative in their own learning

Introduction for Spring 2023 Issue

Access the online Pressbooks version of this introduction here. An introduction to the Spring 2023 issue of the Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Habits of Mind: Designing Courses for Student Success

Although content knowledge remains at the heart of college teaching and learning, forward-thinking instructors recognize that we must also provide 21st-century college students with transferable skills (sometimes called portable intellectual abilities) to prepare them for their futures (Vazquez, 2020; Ritchhart, 2015; Venezia & Jaeger, 2013; Hazard, 2012). To “grow their capacity as efficacious thinkers to navigate and thrive in the face of unprecedented change” (Costa et al., 2023), students must learn and improve important study skills and academic dispositions throughout their educational careers. If we do not focus on skills-building in college courses, students will not be prepared for the challenges that await them after they leave institutions of higher education. If students are not prepared for these postsecondary education challenges, then it is fair to say that college faculty have failed them

Sanitizing History: Environmental Cleanup and Historic Preservation in U.S. West Mining Communities

Residents in mining towns of the U.S. West face a troubling quandary in their attempts to preserve historical evidence of their town’s industrial past, because that evidence threatens their health. The 1980 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA, or “Superfund”) authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up toxic sites, but these sites are often where the most marginalized residents have lived and are sometimes the only evidence of those residents. How have mining communities preserved the past while ensuring the community’s health and safety? My dissertation, “Sanitizing History: Historic Preservation and Environmentalism in U.S. West Mining Communities,” is the first book-length study that weaves together the histories of historic preservation and environmentalism to demonstrate that the answer lies with interagency cooperation and site-specific solutions. Focusing on Butte, Montana; Globe, Arizona; and Leadville, Colorado, my study relies on a wide array of source material, including archival collections and site visits. Chapter Two shows how some narratives about mining towns, rather than boosting the towns, derided them for their physical and moral uncleanliness. Chapter Three traces Progressive Era urban reform while Chapter Four documents infrastructure modernization from the 1920s to 1940s and the resulting destruction of historical resources related to marginalized populations. Chapter Five explores redevelopment in the early postwar years. Chapter Six demonstrates how historic preservation and environmental policies coalesced in the 1960s, and Chapter Seven reveals that previously marginalized residents leveraged 1980s environmental laws to gain cleanup of mining landscapes. By employing lenses of intersectionality and agency, my project concludes that, in the process of asserting their right to bodily health and safety, mining town residents have perpetuated a pattern of forgetting that allowed cultural ills to continue. My work thus prompts scholars, activists, and members of the general public to search for policies that preserve painful pasts while allowing for healing

On the trail, vol. 3, no. 1

Summer 2012.The Public Lands History Center newsletter

Shot reproducibility of the self-magnetic-pinch diode at 4.5 MV

In experiments conducted at Sandia National Laboratories’ RITS-6 accelerator, the self-magnetic-pinch diode exhibits significant shot-to-shot variability. Specifically, for identical hardware operated at the same voltage, some shots exhibit a catastrophic drop in diode impedance. A study is underway to identify sources of shot-to-shot variations which correlate with diode impedance collapse. The scope of this report is limited to data collected at 4.5-MV peak voltage and sources of variability which occur away from the diode, such as sheath electron emission and trajectories, variations in pulsed power, load and transmission line alignment, and different field shapers. We find no changes in the transmission line hardware, alignment, or hardware preparation methods which correlate with impedance collapse. However, in classifying good versus poor shots, we find that there is not a continuous spectrum of diode impedance behavior but that the good and poor shots can be grouped into two distinct impedance profiles. In poor shots, the sheath current in the load region falls from 16%–30% of the total current to less than 10%. This result will form the basis of a follow-up study focusing on the variability resulting from diode physics

Investigations of shot reproducibility for the SMP diode at 4.5 MV.

In experiments conducted on the RITS-6 accelerator, the SMP diode exhibits sig- ni cant shot-to-shot variability. Speci cally, for identical hardware operated at the same voltage, some shots exhibit a catastrophic drop in diode impedance. A study is underway to identify sources of shot-to-shot variations which correlate with diode impedance collapse. To remove knob emission as a source, only data from a shot series conducted with a 4.5-MV peak voltage are considered. The scope of this report is limited to sources of variability which occur away from the diode, such as power ow emission and trajectory changes, variations in pulsed power, dustbin and transmission line alignment, and di erent knob shapes. We nd no changes in the transmission line hardware, alignment, or hardware preparation methods which correlate with impedance collapse. However, in classifying good versus poor shots, we nd that there is not a continuous spectrum of diode impedance behavior but that the good and poor shots can be grouped into two distinct impedance pro les. This result forms the basis of a follow-on study focusing on the variability resulting from diode physics.