Scholar - Women Also Know History

Participant Info

Keywords: print culture, women and gender, motherhood, pregnancy, early America, nineteenth century, archives and special collections

About Me: I am the Archivist for the Maryland Province Archives at Georgetown University’s Booth Family Center for Special Collections. I received my PhD in history from Brandeis University, where I studied the history of gender, sexuality, and print culture in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America.

My dissertation, “Motherhood Writ Large: Transgressive Maternity and American Popular Print, 1768-1868,” examined the stories of women who violated the legal and social norms of motherhood and the robust popular debate that their actions generated. My work was supported by the American Antiquarian Society, theHistorical Society of Pennsylvania, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and theNew England Regional Fellowship Consortium. For the 2017-2018 academic year, I was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University’s Department of History.

I also hold an MLS with an archival concentration from the University of Maryland’s History and Library Science program, and I have worked at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Newberry Library for the Humanities, and University of Maryland’s Special Collections in Performing Arts.

Recent Publications: “Motherhood on a Mission: Missionaries, “Heathens,” and the Maternal Ideal in the Early American Republic,” Early American Studies, fall 2019

“How India Inspired American Feminists,” Hindustan Times, March 23, 2018

“Fellow Spotlight: Missionaries and Motherhood,” Library Company of Philadelphia E-News, March 2017

Expertise by Topic: Book History, Family, Gender, Libraries & Archives, Literary History, Sexuality, Slavery, Women