David Goodman

Professor David Goodman is Professor in US History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, Faculty of Arts, at the University of Melbourne. He completed a BA (Hons.), Dip. Ed., and MA in History at the University of Melbourne, and a PhD in History at the University of Chicago. Goodman teaches US history and serves as Director of the Digital Studio in the Faculty of Arts, supporting digital humanities, arts, and social sciences (HASS) research, including models of support for digital HASS researchers and best practices in DHASS training through comparative studies. His expertise encompasses American and Atlantic history.

Goodman's research specializations include American history, with focuses on gold rushes, gambling in Harlem, propaganda and sound, fortune-telling in modern America, free speech and hate speech precedents like Charles Coughlin, racial change and time in the USA, and conservative political rhetoric over time. Key publications feature his book Gold Seeking: Victoria and California in the 1850s (1994, Allen & Unwin and Stanford University Press), which addresses public apprehensions about gold rushes and the societies they prefigured; the chapter 'The gold rushes of the 1850s' in The Cambridge History of Australia; co-editor of Unsettling America: Crisis and Belonging in United States History; 'Propaganda and sound' (2018); and ''Gold and the Public in the Nineteenth-Century Gold Rushes'' in an edited volume by Benjamin Mountford and Stephen Tuffnell. He has contributed public articles such as 'Race, change and time in the USA' (Pursuit, University of Melbourne, 2020), exploring historical analogies for racial progress. Goodman engages in projects like 'A History of Fortune Telling in Modern America,' 'Best Practices in Digital Humanities, Arts, and Social Science (DHASS) Training,' and tracking conservative rhetoric via the Melbourne Data Analytics Platform.

Professional Email: d.goodman@unimelb.edu.au