Writing | Teaching | Blog | Media | Games

Rob MacDougall is Wendigo University’s* Ignatius L. Donnelly Professor* of Old Weird American, Secret Canadian, Gilded Age, Digital, Geek, Gaming, Big, Alternate, and Two-Fisted History.*

*OK, not really. See my real bio here.



My book, The People’s Network, won the 2016 Albert B. Corey Prize, jointly awarded by the American Historical Association and the Canadian Historical Association for the best book in the last two years on the history of Canada and the United States.



I co-wrote a chapter with my wife, Lisa Faden, entitled “Simulation Literacy: The Case for Wargames in the History Classroom,” in Zones of Control: Perspectives on Wargaming, a huge and awesome new anthology from MIT Press.



My SSHRC-funded research project, King Crank, uses computational methods to trace the circulation of pseudoscience and crank invention in 19th-century America. How do bad ideas spread, and how do communication networks shape the thoughts we have and share?



Tecumseh Lies Here is an augmented reality or alternate reality game (ARG) designed to teach critical historical thinking and explore the history of the War of 1812. Over 150 elementary school students and others played the most recent iteration of Tecumseh Lies Here.



The Newberry Library published my essay, Mapping Communication, as part of an exhibit and collection on “Mapping Movement in American History and Culture.” The online version pairs hi-res images of a dozen gorgeous historical maps with my commentary on each.



I co-host a podcast called Hold My Order, Terrible Dresser: The Deep-Dive, History-Nerd WKRP in Cincinnati Podcast. (Yes, really!) Every episode explores the culture and history of the 1970s and 1980s through the lens of that beloved sitcom.

My long-running blog, Old is the New New, has been awfully quiet lately. But I’m sure all those posts are around here somewhere.