Your dissertation, which is in the field of Modern European History and completed in Spring 2015, tells the
story of Russian and American encounters in the frontier land of Alaska during the early 1800s. You tell this
story using the ship Juno as a centerpiece and focal point. In many ways, the history that you present is ‘in between’
in that it describes a geographical place that is in between the Russian Empire and the United States, your
historical protagonists are also in between these two entities, the time period that you address is in between the
grand historical periods that we typically think of, and you employ a methodology that is in between history and
history of science. Can you tell us a little bit about why you chose to tell such a story and why you took the
approach that you did?
My overall, larger theme is that ideas have real ramifications and that they actually affect people—that’s
what I wanted to show in my dissertation. These large historical concepts, for instance natural history,
commerce, or the Enlightenment, play out in very small and remote areas and people take these concepts
and ideas with them wherever they go, even remote areas such as the Alaskan frontier in the early 1800s.
The individuals in my work see the world through these concepts and ideas and changed the environments
they encountered as a result of those ideas. I think what is oftentimes overlooked, and it is truly fascinating,
when we talk about the Enlightenment or the development of commerce or natural science, is that not
only do these high theories have concrete ramifications, but they affect real people in surprising ways.
As far as the different disciplines that I employed in my work, I don’t think that we should think of
disciplines in separate spheres. My topic is a blend of history, history of science, social science, and
humanities. Since my topic focuses on the ship Juno, geography and the scientific process of navigating
a ship play a very large part in my work. The ship itself was a microcosm of science and technology of its
time, and as it travelled from place to place, observing and navigating, this science was employed in the
service of empire, of state, and of commerce. Furthermore, the Juno and its explorations represented an
expression of natural science that was often separated from the service of the state since the ship was under
the control of men who were sometimes completely indifferent to the needs of the state. In many ways,
in its brief lifespan, the Juno became a state within itself, with its own authority to conduct scientific
research, war, diplomacy, and commerce. The Juno was the epitome of these kinds of larger ideas as it
moved along the coast of the Pacific Northwest and to Japan and Siberia.
Your narrative structure is different from what we typically expect in a history dissertation and you spend a good
deal of time actually telling the story of the Juno and the people whose lives are intersected by it. Can you tell us
a little bit about how you came to the decision to write it in this way?
I took some risks with the narrative, but I was particularly interested in writing a readable dissertation—
Wanderlust.
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