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About Me

I am a historian of the 20th-century United States, focusing especially on women, foreign relations, and law.

My first book, Pan American Women: U.S. Internationalists and Revolutionary Mexico (Penn, 2014), analyzed U.S. and Mexican women’s efforts at cooperation during the years of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1940).

My second, Citizens of the World: U.S. Women and Global Government (Penn, 2022), is a history of women’s internationalist thought between 1900 and 1950. I profile nine women who saw themselves as world citizens and promoted world government in various ways.

I’ve also written several articles on U.S. women’s international activism that have appeared in Diplomatic History, Peace & Change, and History of Education Quarterly.

Over the last few years I’ve shifted my focus away from U.S. women and toward the law. My current book is Selective Justice: The Draft, the Law, and the Vietnam War, a study of legal battles over the draft in the 1960s and 70s. Based on court records and government documents as well as archival sources and personal interviews, the book explores how courtroom debates over conscription stretched far beyond the Vietnam War and touched a range of issues at the heart of American life.

Recent Publications

Citizens of the World: U.S. Women and International Government (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022).

“Women’s Politics in International Context,” America in the World, 1900-1945, eds. Brooke L. Blower and Andrew Preston, vol. 3 of The Cambridge History of America in the World, ed. Mark Philip Bradley (Cambridge University Press, 2022), 360-380.

“‘The War Power is Not a Blank Check’: The Supreme Court and Conscientious Objection, 1917-1973,” Journal of Policy History 31, no. 3 (July 2019): 303–25.

“‘Chaos, War, or a New World Order?’ A Radical Vision of Peace and World Government in the 1930s,” Peace & Change 43, no. 4 (October 2018): 473–97.

“Education for Pax Americana: The Limits of Internationalism in Progressive-Era Peace Education,” History of Education Quarterly 57, no. 4 (November 2017): 515–41.

“Twenty Years of Worlds of Women: Leila Rupp’s Impact on the History of U.S. Women’s Internationalism,” History Compass 15, no. 6 (June 2017). doi: 10.1111/hic3.12381.

“Teaching & Learning Guide for: The History of U.S. Women’s Internationalism” History Compass 15, no. 6 (June 2017), doi: 10.1111/hic3.12382.

“Citizenship, Gender, and Conscience: United States v. Schwimmer,” Journal of Supreme Court History 40, no. 2 (July 2015): 154–71.

Pan American Women: U.S. Internationalists and Revolutionary Mexico (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)

“The Inter-American Commission of Women: Sources on Hemispheric Solidarity” in Women and Social Movements International (Alexander Street, 2012).

“How to ‘Make This Pan American Thing Go’? Interwar Debates on U.S. Women’s Activism in the Western Hemisphere,” in Women and Transnational Activism in Historical Perspective, eds. Kim Jensen and Erika Kuhlman (Republic of Letters, 2010), 173–92.

“The Pan American Conference of Women, 1922: Successful Suffragists Turn to International Relations,” Diplomatic History 31, no. 5 (November 2007): 801­–28.

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@MeganThrelkeld

Country Focus

United States

Expertise by Geography

United States

Expertise by Chronology

20th century

Expertise by Topic

Diplomacy, Gender, Law, Women, World War I, World War II