| Title: |
Professor
Director, Center for Public History + Digital Humanities |
| Dept: | History |
| Office: | RT 1310 |
| Phone: | 216-687-3970 |
| Email: | M.SOUTHER@csuohio.edu |
| Web: | http://marksouther.org |
| Address: | 2121 Euclid Ave. RT 1310, Cleveland, OH 44115 |
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| Education: | ||||||||
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Ph.D., History, Tulane University, 2002
M.A., History, University of Richmond, 1996 B.A., History, Furman University, 1994 | ||||||||
| Brief Bio: | ||
| Mark Souther specializes in 20th-century U.S., urban, digital, and public history. Souther is the author of Believing in Cleveland: Managing Decline in "The Best Location in the Nation" (Temple University Press, 2017) and New Orleans on Parade: Tourism and the Transformation of the Crescent City (Louisiana State University Press, 2006, paper 2013). He is co-editor (with Nicholas Dagen Bloom) of American Tourism: Constructing a National Tradition (Center for American Places, 2012). He is completing a new book titled Sandhill Cities: Metropolitan Ambitions on Georgia's Fall Line, a comparative history of urban and regional planning and development in Augusta, Macon, and Columbus, Georgia, in the 20th century.
Souther's recent publications include two articles on beautification, preservation, and downtown planning in Georgia's fall line cities published in the Georgia Historical Quarterly (2020) and Journal of Planning History (2021); two articles on suburbanization, including one focusing on Cleveland's suburban Jewish community in the 1930s-70s in a Rutgers University Press edited volume (2020) and another on African American servants, custodians, renters, and homeowners in Cleveland Heights in the 1900s-50s in the Journal of Urban History (2023); and three articles on digital public history, including one on the Cleveland Historical project in a Temple University Press edited volume (2023) and two co-authored with Meshack Owino on their MaCleKi project with Maseno University in Kisumu, Kenya, published in History in Africa (2020) and a Lexington Books edited volume (2022). [See Publications for full citations.] Souther also published "Urban Tourism in the U.S. since 1800" in both the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, ed. Jon Butler (Oxford University Press, 2018) and Oxford Encyclopedia of American Urban History, ed. Timothy J. Gilfoyle (Oxford University Press, 2019), as well as additional articles in The Journal of American History, Journal of Urban History, Journal of Planning History, Planning Perspectives, Louisiana History, Reviews in American History, and in edited volumes. Souther is Director of the Center for Public History + Digital Humanities, a research center whose principal projects and initiatives include the Cleveland Historical mobile app, Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection, and the Curatescape mobile publishing framework, developed through an NEH digital humanities grant. His newest digital public history project, Green Book Cleveland, has grown into a partnership with Cuyahoga Valley National Park and multiple partners. Souther has led three NEH grant projects, most recently "PlacePress: A WordPress Plugin for Publishing Location-based Tours and Stories" (2020-22). He collaborated with Meshack Owino on two NEH grants, "Curating Kisumu: Adapting Mobile Humanities Interpretation in East Africa" (2014-15) and "Curating East Africa: A Platform and Process for Location-based Storytelling in the Developing World" (2017-18). Since becoming Director in 2013, Souther has generated over $1.3 million in external funding to support Center projects and initiatives. He has served on multiple NEH grant review panels and has provided consulting for public and digital scholarship in support of tenure and promotion cases, grants, documentaries, and museum exhibitions. View CV (PDF). | ||
| Honors and Awards: | ||
| Arts & Sciences Faculty Outstanding Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity Award, Cleveland State University, 2023
Distinguished Faculty Award for Research, Cleveland State University, 2023 John Nolen Research Fund Award, Cornell University Library Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, 2019 Journal of Planning History Prize (Honorable Mention), Society for American City and Regional Planning History, 2017 Technology Commercialization Award, Ohio Faculty Council, 2016 - with CPHDH Golden Apple Award, Young Alumni Council of CSU Alumni Association, 2014 Best Mobile App, eTech Ohio, State of Ohio, 2011 - with CPHDH Outstanding Public History Project (Honorable Mention), National Council on Public History, 2011 - with CPHDH Outstanding Public History Award, Ohio Academy of History, 2011 - with CPHDH Michael V.R. Thomason Book Award, Gulf South Historical Association, 2007 Kemper and Leila Williams Prize in Louisiana History, Historic New Orleans Collection and Louisiana Historical Association, 2006 Hugh F. Rankin Prize in Louisiana History, Louisiana Historical Association, 2001 John T. Monroe Dissertation Year Fellowship, Tulane University, 2001 Peter T. Cominos Memorial Award, Tulane University, 2001 | ||
| Teaching Areas: | ||
| 20th Century U.S.; Public History; Urban History; U.S. South | ||
| Research Grants: | ||
| PI, PlacePress: A WordPress Plugin for Publishing Location-based Tours and Stories, National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Digital Humanities Advancement Grant, $79,568, 2020-22
PI, Curating East Africa: A Platform and Process for Location-based Storytelling in the Developing World, National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Digital Humanities Advancement Grant, $74,939, 2017-18 PI, TourSites for WordPress, National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant, subaward via Ohio History Connection, $24,430, 2016 PI, Curating Kisumu: Adapting Mobile Humanities Interpretation in East Africa, National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant, $59,494, 2014-15 PI, Mobile Museum Initiative, National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant, subaward via Arizona State University, $14,453, 2013-15 Co-PI, The Sounds of American History, U.S. Department of Education, Teaching American History Program, $1,994,000, 2006-10 See CV for non-federal research grants. | ||