RICK WOTEN
ABOUT
I am a professor of history with Pearson Education and with prior experience at Montana State University Northern, Simpson College, Des Moines Area Community College with public history experience as a museum director, non-profit director, and subject matter expert. I am a graduate of the Agricultural History and Rural Studies PhD program at Iowa State University.

My areas of emphasis are 19th century United States, sport, agricultural, environmental history, and historical preservation. In addition, I am an avid researcher, digital humanist, scholar, lecturer, and public speaker on environmental, Iowa, Midwestern, agricultural, rural, transportation, and bicycling history.

I am currently involved in numerous areas of research and delivery methodologies. I am re-examining the role and importance of landscapes, the midwestern frontier, and built environments, specifically the regions of the Ohio River and Mississippi River valleys, and internal improvements in the formation of state. Although regionalism often is a limiting term, I seek to refocus a portion of the historiography on the importance that states held in defining the roles of state, citizens, private business, nationalism, and federalism.

It is my intention that the examination of early United States life, culture, and law will contribute to the development of an immersive digital humanities project. The project, available via the Internet, will serve as a widely accessible digital history resource for scholars, educators, students, and the general public. The project's development will offer students (undergraduate and graduate), fellow faculty, and interdisciplinary colleagues great collaborative opportunity to contribute scholarly, ideas, content, and topics while serving as a digital tool for historical education, awareness, and preservation.
PAST RESEARCH
CURRENT RESEARCH
I am honored to be a research fellow for both The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and The Filson Historical Society. The fellowships have assisted my research efforts and I am humbled by their support.

I have had several great opportunities to assist the research of professors while a graduate student within the ISU Department of History that included assisting in GIS mapping, orthorectification, and metadata analysis with Dr. Sara Gregg to map historical change in Appalachia. Her subsequent monograph,
Managing the Mountains: Land Use Planning, The New Deal, and the Creation of a Federal Landscape in Appalachia, has been published by Yale University Press.

I oversaw the operation and development of the digital history project Agricultural History Primer made possible by the ISU Center for On-Line Learning and the Department of History.