Dissertation

“The Shipwreck Shore: Marine Disasters and the Creation of the Modern American Littoral.”

My dissertation examines shipwrecks, surprisingly frequent disasters along the American shore, and how they shaped the development of the coastline between Cape Cod, Massachusetts and Barnegat, New Jersey. Like all disasters, shipwrecks do things—think about Exxon Valdez and environmental devastation or the Titanic and the establishment of groundbreaking safety regulations. But less spectacular disasters have also changed the wider world, oftentimes doing so in subtle, if profound ways. The thousands of vessels that wrecked along the coast between Cape Cod and Barnegat helped turn an isolated frontier into an essential element of modern America. As tangible objects, coastal shipwrecks brought state and national governments, businesses, spectators, and even the telegraph to the eastward fringe of a westward moving nation. As widely disseminated stories and images, they introduced land-locked readers to the shore, turning it into the common cultural reference point we all know today. More significantly, my dissertation examines themes that are central to understanding our modern world—from the constructive role of disasters in American history to our nation’s evolving relationship with the sea and shore.