He has held teaching positions with the University of Arizona, the University of Utah, as well as the Centro Studi Cittá in Orvieto, Italy. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Arizona in 2009. The subject of his dissertation was the Rephotographic Survey Project, 1977-1979. His research interests include the art and photography of the American West, as well as the great American surveys of the 19th and20th Centuries. Professor Swensen’s current work includes investigations into the community of photography in the 1970s, as well as the relationship between John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and the Farm Security Administration. An essay “Focusing on the Migrant: Dorothea Lange and the John Steinbeck Committee, 1938,” (University of Kentucky Press) will be published in 2012.