I am Associate Professor of History at York College of Pennsylvania, where I teach courses in Early American, Women’s and Gender, and Public History.
My book, In Dependence: Women and the Patriarchal State in Revolutionary America, was published with New York University Press in the spring of 2023. In Dependence explores the ways in which women in Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston manipulated their legal, social, and economic positions of dependence and turned these constraints into vehicles of female empowerment. Although the law and social custom established restrictions on women’s rights and behavior, early American women were not completely powerless in their dependent state. By using legislative petitions, divorce cases, marriage settlements, equity cases, probate records, manumission deeds, freedom suits, almshouse records, and charitable institutional files, In Dependence demonstrates that women defined their relationship with the patriarchal state—the colonial, revolutionary, and early national governments and organizations helmed by elite men—in terms of their multifaceted dependencies. I argue that many women in this period were able to achieve a more empowered role not in spite of their dependent status but because of it. They thus exposed the paradoxes of their legal and social subordination by using the very terms of their dependence to undermine the system that was meant to keep them in submission. My dissertation, on which this project is based, was a finalist for the 2017 SHEAR Manuscript Prize.
Currently, I am working on a manuscript tentatively titled Engendering Orientalism in the Empire of Liberty, which explores early American political and cultural elites’ use of constructs of the gendered Other in the creation of early national identity. During the 2025-26 academic year, I am on sabbatical, conducting research for this project through fellowships awarded by the New England Research Fellowship Consortium (NERFC), the John Carter Brown Library, the George Washington Presidential Library, and the American Philosophical Society.
My other publications include “A Revolution of One’s Own” (The American Historian, Spring 2024), “Complicated Allegiances: Women, Politics, and Property in Post-Occupation Charleston,” in Holly Mayer, ed., Women Waging War in the American Revolution (UVA Press, 2022), and “Privileged in the Patriarchy: How Charleston Wives Negotiated Financial Freedom in the Early Republic” (South Carolina Historical Magazine, July 2018). I have two pieces forthcoming in the fall of 2025: “Rethinking the Gender of Politics in the Early Republic” (Journal of the Early Republic) and “The Slave, the Concubine, and the Unnatural Beauty: Depictions of the Other and the Constriction of Women’s Rights in American Magazines, 1790-1800” (The Gendered Republic, eds. Friend and Glover, UVA Press).
My publicly-engaged work includes bylines in The Washington Post, Time, and Salon; C-SPAN’s Lectures in History Program; public talks at Clemson University, the New York State Library, the James Monroe Museum, The Library Company of Philadelphia, and The Kinder Institute at the University of Missouri; podcast interviews with Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant, Unsung History, Dirty Sexy History, New Books Network, and Mainely History; teacher’s institutes at Mount Vernon and Stratford Hall; and various contributions to the Revolutionary Spaces organization, including its “Tea Party Tonight!” program and consultation on its 2023 exhibit, “The Humble Petitioner: Fighting for Rights in 18th Century America.” Currently, I am consulting on the York History Center’s upcoming exhibit on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of American Independence. I have supervised various student projects, including the spring 2024 Golden Dreams podcast series and an exhibit on the history of Zion Lutheran Church in York, PA. My full CV is available here.
I received my PhD in Early American and Women’s and Gender History from the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University in December 2016. I earned my MA in United States History and Women’s and Gender History from Villanova University in 2012, and my BA in History from Boston College in 2010.