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About Me

I am a historian at University of Notre Dame, committed to making the research of the academy available to the public. All my work springs from my interest in how we have used the power of government in our lives. My work covers an extraordinarily broad range of American history from constitutional law in the 19th Century to fashion in the 21st Century. The Lost Art of Dress: The Women Who Once Made American Stylish (Basic Books, 2014) tells the story of the Dress Doctors, the remarkable women who taught Americans how to dress in the 20th Century. They worked at the USDA in the Bureau of Home Economics, wrote dozens of books, lectured at women’s clubs, and spoke on the radio. I explain their rise and then their fall in the 1960s, and consider what we’ve been coping with ever since. It just came out in paperback in 2016.

Read more about it at ProfessorPski.com or follow my blog at http://professorpski.tumblr.com/

I am finishing a book on the Cincinnati Bible War which began when they city’s school board ended Bible reading in 1869–yes, 1869–and all hell broke loose in the local and national media. When scholars tell the story of the Bible War, they depict it as a struggle between pious and backward pro-Bible forces and the progressive forces of religious liberty. I argue that religion itself played a crucial role in the rise of modern religious liberty. My article on “Scarlet Fever, Stanley Matthews, and the Cincinnati Bible War” won the Hughes-Gossett Award for 2017 from the Supreme Court Historical Society. My Bible War research was most recently funded by a Public Scholar Award from from the National Endowment for the Humanities for 2016, and a grant from the Spencer Foundation for 2015-2016.

Recent Publications

“Scarlet Fever, Stanley Matthews, and the Cincinnati Bible War,” Journal of Supreme Court History, 2017, Winner of the Hughes-Gossett Award.

The Lost Art of Dress: The Women Who Once Made America Stylish, (New York: Basic Books, 2014). New York Times Bestseller in Fashion, Manners and Customs, April 2016, May 2016, June 2016.

Religion, Morality, and the Constitutional Order, (American Historical Association’s New Essays on American Constitutional History, 2011).

“David J. Brewer,” Great Christian Jurists in American History edited by Daniel L. Dreisbach and Mark Hall, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.

“John Marshall Harlan the Elder,” Great Christian Jurists in American History edited by Daniel L. Dreisbach and Mark Hall, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.

Media Coverage

Social Media

Country Focus

USA

Expertise by Geography

United States, Western Europe

Expertise by Chronology

19th century, 20th century

Expertise by Topic

American Civil War, American Founding Era, Gender, Law, Material Culture, Public History, Religion, Women