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Dr.
J. Mark Souther |
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I specialize in 20th-century U.S. urban and public history, focusing on urban tourism. My current research traces the rise of tourism in post-1930 United States cities, focusing on New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and New Orleans. I am also exploring the decline and revitalization of Great Lakes cities since 1950, focusing on discourses about civic image and public responses to decline. My first book, New Orleans on Parade: Tourism and the Transformation of the Crescent City, winner of the 2006 Kemper and Leila Williams Prize in Louisiana History, is available from the Louisiana State University Press. New Orleans on Parade examines the ways in which tourism shaped New Orleans in the last six decades, with particular attention to race and class relations, public policy and discourse, and the cultural foundations of the city’s tourist image, notably the French Quarter, Mardi Gras, and jazz. My teaching interests parallel my research activity. Each fall I teach HIS 311/511 (Introduction to Public History), and in spring semesters I alternate teaching HIS 304/504 (U.S. Urban History) and HIS 319/519 (U.S. Tourism, Memory, and Identity). I also teach HIS 111 (U.S. History to 1877) and HIS 112 (U.S. History since 1877) in rotation. I find that I am able to share much of what I have learned through my research and public history activities with my students. I earned my B.A. in History at Furman University (1994), my M.A. in History at the University of Richmond (1996), and my Ph.D. in History at Tulane University (2002). After teaching for one year at Tulane on a replacement appointment, I became Assistant Professor of History at Cleveland State University in 2003. I coordinate the Department of History’s Public History Internships, which has placed 22 students in Northeast Ohio area museums, historical societies, historic preservation organizations, archives, and other public history institutions in the past three years. My colleague Mark Tebeau and I co-direct the Euclid Corridor Oral History Project, a partnership between Cleveland Public Art, Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, and Ideastream (WCPN and WVIZ) to research the history of Euclid Avenue as a way of creating a sense of place in conjunction with the RTA’s planned Euclid Corridor Transportation Project. Each semester we are collaborating with students in our urban, public, and local history courses, who are involved in all phases of the project. I also coordinate the Detroit Shoreway Oral History Project, which is documenting public memory in one of Cleveland's West Side neighborhoods. Finally, I serve as academic co-director for a U.S. Department of Education--funded Teaching American History grant called The Sounds of American History. My interest in oral history has deep roots. As early as 1983 I was interviewing my grandparents on their experiences in the 1930s-40s, and, appropriately, a new website called Witness to War is dedicated to my grandfather John Souther, who coordinated many of the oral histories for the project. On a personal note, I am from Gainesville, Georgia, and lived in New Orleans for seven years before moving to Ohio. I live in Cleveland Heights with my wife Stacey and our cat Clio. |
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