Project Director
Anthony F. Arrigo is an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Dr. Arrigo graduated from the University of Minnesota with a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Scientific and Technical Communication. Winner of the 2012 Provost’s award for teaching with technology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and the 2008 James I. Brown Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Minnesota, he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in rhetorical theory, visual rhetoric, cultural studies, and environmental literature & communications. He is also the author of the book Imaging Hoover Dam: The Making of a Cultural Icon (2014). He is currently working on a new book on the photography of Winthrop A. Davis.
Project Consultant
Michael Green is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Dr. Green earned his Ph.D. at Columbia University and teaches history courses on nineteenth-century America, and on Nevada and Las Vegas for UNLV’s Honors College. Winner of the American Historical Association’s 2013 Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award, he is the author or co-author of eight books, including Nevada: A History of the Silver State (2015). From 2007-2011 he was the co-director of a $1.998 million U.S. Department of Education Teaching American History grant, “Inside American History,” for the Clark County, Nevada School District. He edits the Wilbur S. Shepperson Series on Nevada History for the University of Nevada Press and served as editor of the Nevada Historical Society Quarterly from 2004 to 2012.
Teaching Mentor
Jeffrey Hinton holds an Ed.S. in Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment from Walden University and a Masters of Arts in U.S. History from UNLV. A National Board-Certified teacher, he has received numerous teaching awards, including the 2014 Michael Landsberry Nevada Teacher of the Year, the Gilder Lehrman Nevada History Teacher of the Year, a James Madison Graduate Fellowship, Nevada Daughters of the American Revolution Teacher of the Year, Smiths Center Heart of Education Winner, and Public Education Foundation’s Teacher of Excellence. Jeff has 18 years of teaching experience in the magnet school setting where he has successfully implemented inquiry and project-based learning. Currently, Jeff is completing his doctorate degree with a research focus on culturally responsive pedagogy. Jeff has lived in the Las Vegas valley for over 25 years, he is a former Marine and guitar player.
Scholars and Lecturers (in alphabetical order)
William Bauer is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Dr. Bauer received his Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Bauer teaches classes on California Indian, American Indian, and American West history and is UNLV’s faculty liaison to the Newberry Library’s Consortium on American Indian Studies. Dr. Bauer is the author of “We Were All Like Migrant Workers Here”: Work, Community and Memory on California’s Round Valley Reservation, 1850-1941 (2009).
DeAnna Beachley is a Professor of History and Women’s Studies at the College of Southern Nevada. Dr. Beachley received her Ph.D. in History from Northern Arizona University. She is lead faculty for Women’s Studies and co-director of a Teaching American History grant with CCSD. She teaches American history and the history of the American Women’s Movement.
Sally Denton a native of Boulder City, independent scholar, investigative reporter, and the Director of Literary Nonfiction and Community Relations at Black Mountain Institute. She is the author of nine books including The Money and the Power, American Massacre, The Bluegrass Conspiracy. and her latest, The Profiteers: Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World (2016).
Paul Gilmore is a history instructor and Chair of the History and Political Science Department at Fresno City College. He earned an MA in History at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and an MS in History of Technology at Georgia Tech. He has been teaching US, World, and California History for the last twenty years. He also teaches “Rails, Water, and Power: A History of California’s Infrastructure,” a course that delves into the political, technological, and social history of the massive irrigation, transportation, and power generation projects that stretch across the state and region. He is especially interested in the role of Hoover Dam in the shaping of the urban and agricultural empires of Southern California.
Karen Harry is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Dr. Harry specializes in the archaeology of the North American Southwest. She has conducted ongoing field research on the Grand Canyon National Monument of Northern Arizona and the Lake Mead National Recreation Area of both northern Arizona and Southern Nevada. Professor Harry has obtained more than $1.6 million in external funding, and authored or co-authored two books and regularly publishes in peer-reviewed books and journals.
Donald C. Jackson is the Cornelia F. Hugel Professor of History at Layfayette College. He is a noted historian of water resources, and the author of five books and numerous scholarly articles on the history of engineering and dams including Heavy Ground: William Mulholland and the St. Francis Dam Disaster (2015), Pastoral and Monumental: Dams, Postcards and the Amrican Landscape (2013), Big Dams of the New Deal Era: A Confluence of Engineering and Politics (2006), and Building the Ultimate Dam: John S. Eastwood and the Control of Water in the West (1995).
Andrew Kirk is a Professor of Environmental History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He received his Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico. Dr. Kirk is the author of numerous scholarly articles and five books including Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism (2011) and Reading American Horizons: Primary Documents in American History with Michael Schaller, et al. (2013).
John W. Shields is an Agricultural Engineer within the Water Accounting and Verification Group at the Boulder Canyon Operations Office (BCOO) of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in Boulder City, NV, which is charged with the delivery of Colorado River water and power supplies along the last 688 miles of the Colorado River within the United States. Before this, he worked for over 30 years in Cheyenne, WY, as Interstate Streams Engineer for the State Engineer’s Office. He is also a freelance researcher and writer and was selected as a 2007, 2009 and 2011 recipient of Wyoming State Historical Society (WSHS) Lola Homsher Endowment Fund Wyoming Historical Research Project Grants.
Michelle Follette Turk, Ph.D. is a historian of occupational health and the state of Nevada at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her work examines labor, hazards, and health and safety programs in southern Nevada from early building of the railroad through Hoover Dam construction, chemical manufacturing during World War II, nuclear testing, and resort industry employment. Turk authored A History of Occupational Health and Safety: From 1905 to the Present (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2018), as well as scholarly articles and lectures on occupational health history, Hoover Dam, and Las Vegas medical history. She teaches Nevada and American history courses at UNLV and serves on the Board of Directors of Preserve Nevada, a statewide nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of Nevada’s cultural, historical, and archaeological heritage that is housed on the UNLV campus as part of the Department of History and the Public History Program.
Claytee White is the Director of the Oral History Research Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She received her Masters in American History from UNLV, and is currently finishing her Ph.D. in African-American History with a dissertation titled “’Eight Dollars a Day and Workin’ in the Shade:’ The History of African-Americans in Las Vegas 1905-1960.” As one of five founders of the Las Vegas Black Historical Society Inc., she chronicles the history of the Las Vegas black community that was established in 1905. White currently serves on the Board of Women of Diversity, and the Historic Preservation Commission. White has also served on the Historic Preservation Commission for the city of Las Vegas, Nevada Humanities executive board, and is the past president of the Southwest Oral History Association.
Richard Guy Wilson holds the Commonwealth Professor’s Chair in Architectural History at the University of Virginia. Dr. Wilson received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He has been a visiting fellow at Cambridge University in England, a Guggenheim fellow, and an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). He has served as an advisor and commentator for a number of television programs on PBS and A&E, as well as for 67 segments of the television show America’s Castles. Wilson has been the curator for several major museum exhibitions and is the author of 16 books on architecture.
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Hoover Dam and the Shaping of the American West 