Andrew Needham's Teaching and Research InterestsTeaching Interests:
My main goal in teaching is to explore the hidden connections between what are often perceived as discrete entities in modern America. My courses thus emphasize the connections between nature and technology, between foreign policy and domestic events, between production and consumption, and between inner city and suburb to name just a few. I bring these interests to a variety of courses in modern American History, environmental history, and borderlands history.
Research Interests:
I study the far-reaching environmental and social effects of metropolitan development in the modern US. Specifically, I examine how increasing demand for electricity in the metropolitan Southwest (primarily Phoenix and Los Angeles) led to the construction of a series of coal mines and power plants on the Navajo Nation, thus making Navajo energy resources central to the daily lives of suburban residents throughout the Southwest. My work seeks to reveal the new sources of production that supplied the postwar "Consumer's Republic" and to demonstrate that metropolitan growth created spatial inequalities far beyond the suburban fringe.
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