Judith A. Ridner

Bio

I am an historian of early America, with additional interests in the American frontier, ethnicity and immigration, oral and public history, and digital history.  My current book project, Clothing the Babel, uses visual and material culture to explore the construction of white ethnic identities in the early mid-Atlantic.

This project builds upon my previous work in Pennsylvania history.  My first book, A Town In-Between: Carlisle Pennsylvania and the Early Mid-Atlantic Interior, reconsidered the role that early American towns, and Scots-Irish colonists, played in the development of the early American West.  My second book, The Scots Irish of Early Pennsylvania: A Varied People, which just appeared in 2018, offers a new synthesis of one of early America’s most significant immigrant groups and assesses their enduring legacy in the state’s history.

In addition, I’ve been part of two community-based oral and public history projects, including the Starkville Civil Rights Project.  That project  created the website "A Shaky Truce: Civil Rights Struggles in Starkville, MS, 1960-1980," which uses oral histories and digitized archival documents to narrate the story of school desegregation and the struggle for racial justice here in Starkville and at Mississippi State.

Education

1994 Ph.D., History, The College of William & Mary

1988 M.A., History with a concentration in Historical Archaeology, The College of William & Mary

1986 B.A., History and International Studies, Dickinson College -- Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude

Academic Career

ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS

2019-Present Professor - Department of History, Mississippi State University

2011-2018 Associate Professor – Department of History, Mississippi State University

2017-2018 Senior Research Associate – McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania

2004-2011 Associate Professor – Department of History, Muhlenberg College

1998-2004 Assistant Professor – Department of History Muhlenberg College

1994-1998 Assistant Professor – Department of History, California State University, Northridge.

ADMINISTRATIVE APPOINTMENTS

2009-2011 Chair – Department of History, Muhlenberg College

▪ Led department of ten full-time faculty, two adjuncts, one administrative staff, and 90 undergraduate majors

▪ Managed a budget of $18,000

2006-2009 Director – Center for Ethics, Muhlenberg College

▪ Managed interdisciplinary institute that fostered campus-wide discussions of various contested ethical or social issues relevant to the liberal arts and our contemporary times

▪ Planned and coordinated extensive series of thematic campus programs and events (up to fifteen in a semester), ranging from lectures to films, art exhibits, etc.

▪ Launched a new Living-Learning community for students

▪ Administered program of faculty teaching grants

▪ Managed a budget of $52,000

2004-2005 Program Director – Center for Ethics, Muhlenberg College

▪ Worked with other campus constituents to plan and host thematic programming for the “Disease: Representation and Rights” series

1995-1998 Undergraduate Coordinator – History Department, California State University, Northridge

▪ Coordinated the advisement of 350 undergraduate history majors

PUBLIC HISTORY & HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY EXPERIENCE

2013-present Project Co-Director – Starkville Civil Rights (“A Shaky Truce”) Project – a collaborative effort among faculty and students of the History Department and Libraries at Mississippi State University to document the history of Starkville, Mississippi’s civil rights movement by conducting oral history interviews with local residents and digitizing relevant archival documents.

▪ Research for the project was supported by three external and two internal grants

▪ Launched website “A Shaky Truce: Starkville Civil Rights Struggles, 1960-1980” (see Digital Humanities heading for more details)

▪ Hosted two community forums

2003-2011 Leadership Team Member – Lehigh Valley Black African Heritage History Project – A community-based oral history project by faculty, staff, students at Muhlenberg College and Kutztown University, and staff members from the Lehigh County Senior Center, the Lehigh County Historical Society, Northampton County Historical Society, The Morning Call, and Touchstone Theatre of Bethlehem to document the history of the African American communities of Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton, Pennsylvania.

▪ Project was supported by grants from the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, the Charles H. Hoch Foundation, and the Pennsylvania Humanities Council

▪ Hosted several community forums

▪ Produced & staged the original play, “Another River Flows: Stories, Songs, and a Celebration of the Lehigh Valley Black Experience,” which was performed in the three cities of the Valley in the summer of 2008 (for a short video about the project, click here)

1992, 1990 Archaeological Teaching Assistant – Historical Archaeology Field School sponsored by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation for The College of William & Mary

▪ Assisted in supervising excavations & the processing and cataloging of artifacts in the lab

1988-1989 Jamestown Fellow -- The Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation.

▪ Conducted material culture research using seventeenth-century probate inventories

1987-1989 Archaeological Lab Technician -- Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

▪ Helped supervise the processing and cataloging of artifacts from various seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sites

1987 Archaeological Excavator/Research Assistant -- New Jersey State Museum at Morven, Princeton, NJ

▪ Assisted with garden excavations at former NJ governor’s mansion which was originally the eighteenth-century home of Richard Stockton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence

▪ Conducted historical research on the site and its inhabitants

1987 Archaeology Intern -- James River Institute for Archaeology, Williamsburg, VA.

▪ Assisted in excavations on several seventeenth-century Chesapeake plantation sites

1986 Archaeology Intern -- Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

▪ Assisted excavations on several eighteenth-century sites in Williamsburg’s historic district

▪ Processed & cataloged artifacts in the lab

Research Interests

FIELDS OF SPECIALIZATION

Early America (particularly Pennsylvania & the Mid-Atlantic)

American Immigration & Ethnic History

Material Culture

Oral History

Public History

Digital History

WORKS-in-PROGRESS

Book project Clothing the Babel: The Material Culture of Ethnic Identity in Early America – Ethnicity was an embodied experience that could be read on the bodies of early Americans.  Using material culture as my lens, my project examines how various eighteenth-century European immigrant groups to the mid-Atlantic expressed their ethnic identities in their personal appearances and how Americans of the time perceived and reacted to those expressions.  My goal is to assess how physical appearances influenced the negotiation of pluralism and whiteness in early America.

Book chapter “Immigration and Integration,” for The Cultural History of War in the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Sascha Möbius, volume 4 of A Cultural History of War, series eds. Mary K. Barbier & Dennis Showalter (under contract to Bloomsbury Publishing)

Article “Archibald Loudon: Printer, Entrepreneur, and Indian Hater of the Early Republic”

Publications

Books

• The Scots-Irish of Early Pennsylvania -- Pennsylvania History Series, Temple University Press for the Pennsylvania Historical Association (2018)
• ."A Town In-Between: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and the Early Mid-Atlantic Interior, Early American Studies Series," University Pennsylvania Press (2010).

Articles and Essays

• Under review     “Archibald Loudon and the Politics of Print and Indian Hating in the Early Republic”
• “Immigration and Integration,” for The Cultural History of War in the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Sascha Möbius, volume 4 of A Cultural History of War, series eds. Mary K. Barbier & Dennis Showalter (under contract to Bloomsbury Publishing, forthcoming).
• “Unmasking the Paxton Boys: The Material Culture of the Pamphlet War,” Early American Studies (Spring 2016): 348-376.
• (co-authored with Susan Clemens-Bruder) "Taking Their Place Among the Giants: Performing Oral Histories of Pennsylvania's Black Freedom Struggle," The Oral History Review (Summer 2014).
• "Using the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's "Irish Immigrant Letters Home" to Teach Nineteenth-Century Irish Immigrant History," Journal of American Ethnic History (Summer 2014).
• "Building Urban Spaces for the Interior: Thomas Penn and the Colonization of Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania" in Early American Cartographies, ed. Martin Brueckner (Chapel Hill: published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture by UNC Press, 2011).
• "Relying on the 'Saucy' Men of the Backcountry: Middlemen and the Fur Trade in Pennsylvania" The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (April 2005): 133-162.

PUBLICATIONS related to PEDAGOGY or for CLASSROOM USE

forthcoming “Passion, Politics, and Portrayal in the Paxton Debates,” for Ghost River, a graphic novel analyzing the Paxton Boys Uprising being published by Native Realities Press.  Also available digitally on Digital Paxton.

2014   “Using the Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s “Irish Immigrant Letters Home” to Teach Nineteenth-Century Irish Immigrant History,” Journal of American Ethnic History (Summer 2014).

2015  “The Enlightenment on the Frontier,” The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment, ed. Mark G. Spencer (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).

2003  “The Revolution Produced No Significant Benefits for Women,” in History in Dispute, Volume 12: The American Revolution, ed. Keith Krawczynski (Farmington Hills, MI: St. James Press, 2003).

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

2009  “Report on the Annual Meeting,” Pennsylvania History (spring 2009).

2004   “Introduction,” Representing Disease: The Stephanie Images, exhibit catalog, The Martin Art Gallery, Muhlenberg College (2004).

PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLE

2016  (co-authored with Nickoal Eichmann-Kalwara and Hillary A.H. Richardson) “Creating a Public History Website on a Shoestring Budget with Limited Tech Literacy: The Starkville Civil Rights Project,” DH Commons (October 2016)

ESSAYS & BLOG POSTS

2018 “Baring a Collective British Bottom at the Dutch and their Material Culture,” Lewis Walpole Library Blog (January 12, 2018)

2017 “The Clay Hills,” a chapter for A Bicentennial History of Mississippi, 1817-2017 produced by the Office of the Secretary of State, State of Mississippi (2017).

2016 “Material Culture” for Digital Paxton: Digital Collection, Critical Edition, and Teaching Platform, hosted by the Library Company of Philadelphia (http://digitalpaxton.org/works/digital-paxton/material-culture)

ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES

2016  “Scots Irish (Scotch Irish)” for The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia

Paper Presentations

2019 “Sorting the Babel: Towards a Material Culture of Ethnic Identity in the Early Mid-Atlantic” Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, Atlanta

2019 “The Shifting Politics of Quaker Dress in Pennsylvania” Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (SEASECS) Annual Conference, Myrtle Beach

2018 “Clothing the Body Ethnic in Early America,” American Studies Association Annual Conference, Atlanta (forthcoming)

2018 “Mississippi’s Other Civil Rights Movement: Lessons from the Digital Starkville Civil Rights Project,” Oral History Association Annual Conference, Montreal (forthcoming)

2018 “Clothing the Body Ethnic in Early America,” Summer Seminar Series, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania (forthcoming)

2017 “Archibald Loudon’s ‘Cabinets of Literary Curiosities: Printers and their Publics in Early America,” Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (SEASECS) Annual Conference, Montgomery

2017 “The Severed Snakes and Mangled Bodies of Benjamin Franklin,” Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, Charleston

2016 “They Knew Them When They Saw Them: The Material Culture of Ethnic Identity in Early America,” Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture Annual Conference, Worcester

2016 “Representing Ethnicity in Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Conference (ASECS)

2016 “Benjamin Franklin's Conceptions of the British Race in Eighteenth-Century America,” Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (SEASECS) Annual Conference, Savannah

2015 “Learning by Doing: Creating a Digital Oral and Public History Site on School Desegregation in Starkville, MS” (panel with Hillary Richardson, Nickoal Eichmann, Kelli Nelson, Nick Timmerman), Oral History Association Annual Conference, Tampa

2015 “Digitizing a Community: The Process of Telling the National Civil Rights Narrative through a Local Lens,”(panel with Hillary Richardson, Nickoal Eichmann, Justin Whitney), NAES Conference, Starkville

2014 (With Susan Clemens-Bruder) “Taking it to the Streets Quietly: Voices of the Lehigh Valley’s Civil Rights Movement,” Oral History Association Annual Conference, Madison

2014 “Baskets & Brooms, Hatchets, Naked Quakers, and that Infamous 'Looking Glass for Presbyterians': The Material Culture of the Paxton Boys' Uprising,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Conference (ASECS), Williamsburg

2013 “Destruction or Opportunity?:  Debating Fair Housing, Racial Justice, and Community in Pennsylvania,” International Oral History Association Conference, Barcelona, Spain

2013 “Baskets & Brooms, Hatchets, Naked Quakers, and that Infamous 'Looking Glass for Presbyterians': Using Material Culture to Deconstruct the Literature (and Prints) of the Paxton Boys,” The Paxton Boys and the “Conestoga Massacre” 250 Years Later Conference, Lancaster

2013 “Why Tell Sensational Stories of Barbarous Indians and Innocent White Settlers? Reconsidering Loudon’s Indian Narratives as Text on Race, Ethnicity, and Frontier Violence,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Conference (ASECS), Cleveland

2013 “The Wonders, Curiosities, and Rarities of America’s Violent Frontier Past:  Hugh Henry Brackenridge, Archibald Loudon, and The Most Interesting Narratives of 1808-1811,” South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (SCSECS), Austin

2012 (With Susan Clemens-Bruder) “Seeking a Just Price for Her Home: How One African American Woman Spearheaded Resistance to Urban Renewal in Allentown, PA,” Urban History Conference, New York

2012 (With Susan Clemens-Bruder) “Evolving Memories and the Changing Nature of Cultural Voices in Allentown’s African American Community,” Oral History Association Annual Conference, Cleveland

2012 (With Susan Clemens-Bruder) “’He’s My Color, But He’s Not my Kind’:  Constructing Class from Within the African American Community in Allentown,” How Class Works Conference, SUNY Stony Brook 

2011 “’The Lehigh Valley Isn’t New York, or Philadelphia’: Urban Renewal and Racial Politics in 1960s Allentown, Pennsylvania,” Society for American City and Regional Planning History Bi-Annual Conference, Baltimore  

2011 “Hugh Henry Brackenridge and Archibald Loudon Comment on the Many Nature[s] of the Mid-Atlantic Frontier,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference, Vancouver  

2010 (With Susan Clemens-Bruder) “Crisis or Opportunity?: African Americans Confront the Racial

Politics of Urban Renewal in Allentown, PA,” American Studies Association Annual Conference,   San Antonio 

2010 (With Susan Clemens-Bruder) “Divided But Not Defeated: Urban “Renewal,” Race Politics, and the African American Community of Allentown, PA,” Oral History Association Annual Conference, Atlanta 

2009 (With Susan Clemens-Bruder) “Translating African American Oral History into Theater:  A Case Study from Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley,” Oral History Association Annual Conference, Louisville  

2009 “(Re)Assessing Loudon’s Indian Narratives as Text on Race and Ethnic Identity on the Mid-Atlantic Frontier,” East-Central American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting, Bethlehem

2009 (Poster Session with Linda McGuire) “Facilitating a Campus Conversation About the Ethics of Freedom,” Lilly East Teaching Conference, University of Delaware

2008 “Ethnicity and Religion as Factors Shaping Colonial Pennsylvania’s Contentious Politics: A Case Study of the Paxton Boys Controversy, 1764,” Maple Leaf and Eagle American Studies Conference, University of Helsinki, Finland 

2008 (With Susan Clemens-Bruder) “Voices of the Lehigh Valley’s Black African Heritage:  Promised Land Life in Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton since 1920,” City as Utopia Conference, Lehigh University 

2008 (With Linda McGuire) “Facilitating a Sustained Campus Conversation about Individual and Collective Values,” Institute on College Student Values Conference, Florida State University 

2007 “What Does Being Irish Have to Do With It?:  The Paxton Boys and Their Critics, 1764,” Irish and the Atlantic World Conference, Charleston 

2006 “What Can Captivity Narratives Tell Us about Virginia’s History?” The Virginia Forum, Shenandoah University 

2006 “Building Urban Spaces for the Interior:  Thomas Penn and the Colonization of Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania,” Early American Cartographies Conference, Newberry Library, Chicago 

2006 “A Bloody and Murderous Past:  Irish Protestant Memories of Violence in Ireland and America,” Forum on European Expansion and Global Interaction (FEEGI) Conference, Huntington Library, San Marino  

2004 “Remembering Cruel Actions by Barbarous Enemies in Ireland and America: The Scots-Irish Experience in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” American Conference for Irish Studies Mid-Atlantic Meeting, Princeton University 

2003 “Remembering Actions Most Cruel and Barbarous: Connecting Memories of Violence in 17th Century Ireland and 18th-Century America,” On the Move: Migration and the Reconstruction of Cultural Identity Conference, West Virginia University

2001 “Relying on the ‘Very Saucy’ Men of the Backcountry: Middlemen and the Fur Trade in Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania Historical Association Annual Conference, University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown

1999 “’Outrages Committed by Indians, Civilization Wrought by White People”:  A Backcountry Town Looks Back at its Eighteenth-Century History,” Organization of American Historians Annual Conference, Toronto 

1998 “’To Carry Them Entirely Above Every Obstacle’:  William Irvine and the Complexities of Manhood and Fatherhood in the Pennsylvania Backcountry,” Pennsylvania Historical Association Annual Conference, Muhlenberg College 

1998 “Houses Well Calculated for Public or Private Purposes: Domestic Landscapes in Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania,” American Historical Association Conference, Seattle  

1997 “Fashioning a Great Thoroughfare to the Interior: Planning the Middle Landscape of Eighteenth-Century Carlisle, Pennsylvania,” The Seventh National Conference on American Planning History, Seattle 

1997 “Fashioning a Middle Landscape in Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania: Indians, Colonists, and the Penn Family in the Backcountry,” Southwestern Social Science Association Annual Conference, New Orleans  

1997 “Scotch-Irish Rascals and Worthy Presbyterian Teachers:  Education and Culture on the Pennsylvania Frontier,” Duquesne History Forum, Pittsburgh 

1996 “The Westward Migration of Socio-Cultural Patterns in Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania,” Southwestern Social Science Association Annual Conference, Houston 

1995 “’I May Surely with Propriety Claim It’:  Property and Feminine Notions of Family Preservation in Backcountry Pennsylvania, 1780-1810,” Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR) Conference, Cincinnati  

1995 “’I Am, My Dear Love, Affectionately Yours’:  Husbands and Their Wives in the Pennsylvania Backcountry,” Organization of American Historians Annual Conference, Washington D.C.  

1995 “Status, Culture, and the Structural World in the Valley of Pennsylvania,” After the Backcountry Conference, Virginia Military Institute

1993 “’Almost All Trades are Carried on Here’:  Occupational Structure and Economic Behavior in Post-Revolutionary Carlisle, Pennsylvania,” Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture Colloquium, The College of William & Mary  

1993 “A Duty to Home and Family:  Women Petitioners in Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania,” The Institute for Research on Women Annual Conference, Rutgers University 

1993 “To Love Their Wives as Themselves’?:  Male Visions of Love and Marriage in Eighteenth Century Carlisle,” McNeil Center for Early American Studies Seminar, University of Pennsylvania

CONFERENCE PANEL CHAIR, ROUNDTABLES & COMMENTS

2017 Working Group Co-Chair & Co-Organizer (with Rosalind Beiler) -- “Mediating the Early American Past for Today’s Public[s],” National Council on Public History Annual Conference, Indianapolis

2017 Panel Chair – “Explorations of Gender Identities & Activities in the Eighteenth Century,” Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (SEASECS) Annual Conference, Montgomery

2013-2017 Panel Chair & Comment – for various panels at SHUR Conference for Undergraduate Research, Mississippi State University

2016 Roundtable Co-Mediator and Organizer (with Rosalind Beiler) -- “Early American Historians and the Pursuit of an Inclusive Past,” National Conference on Public History Annual Conference, Baltimore

2014 Panel Chair – for Graduate Student History Conference, University of Alabama

2014 Panel Chair -- for several panels at the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, University of Mississippi

2011 Panel Chair and Comment – “Mathew Carey and the Catholic Enlightenment,” Ireland, America, and the Worlds of Mathew Carey Conference, McNeil Center for Early American Studies/Library Company of Philadelphia

2006 Roundtable Discussant -- “New Horizons in Early Pennsylvania History,” Pennsylvania Historical Association Annual Conference, Philadelphia. 



2003 Panel Chair and Comment – “The Significance of ‘the West,’” Pennsylvania Historical Association Annual Conference, Harrisburg



2002 Comment -- “As Worlds Collide: Mediation on the Fringes of Empire and Nation,” Organization of American Historians Annual Conference in Washington D.C.

2001 Comment –  “As Worlds Collide: Mediation on the Fringes of Empire and Nation,” Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture Seventh Annual Conference, Glasgow, Scotland

1999 Comment -- “History Through Biography in the Eighteenth Century,” Pennsylvania Historical Association Annual Conference, Pittsburgh

Honors & Awards

2016 Project/Team Award -- President’s Commission on the Status of Minorities, Mississippi State University

2016 Elbert Hilliard Oral History Award -- Mississippi Historical Society

2014 William Parrish Graduate Teaching Award -- Department of History, Mississippi State University

2012 Philip S. Klein Book Prize -- Pennsylvania Historical Association

1996 Best Paper in American History Award -- Southwestern Social Science Association

FELLOWSHIPS & GRANTS

2018 Jay and Deborah Last Fellowship -- American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA

2018 Winterthur Short-Term Fellowship -- Winterthur Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE

2017 Travel Grant -- Lewis Walpole Library of Yale University, Farmington, CT

2016 NEH Summer Seminar Grant -- Doing Digital History, George Mason University

2016-2017 Undergraduate Research Grant – ORED, Mississippi State University

2015 Mini-Grant -- Mississippi Humanities Council

2007-2008 Local History Grant -- Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

2005 Andrew H. Mellon Foundation Fellowship -- Library Company of Philadelphia/Historical Society of Pennsylvania

2005 NEH Summer Institute Grant -- British and Indigenous Cultural Encounters in Native North America, John Carter Brown Library, Providence, RI

2010, 2009,  Faculty Development Summer Research Grants -- Muhlenberg College

2006, 2004,

2002, 1999

2002 PEP Faculty Seminar and Course Development Award, Muhlenberg College

1999 Short-Term Fellowship -- The David Library of the American Revolution, Washington Crossing, PA 

1997, 1995 Summer Research Grants -- College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, California State University, Northridge

1997 Course Development Grant -- College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, California State University, Northridge

1997 Faculty Research Grant -- Office of Research and Sponsored Projects, California State University, Northridge

1995 Affirmative Action Faculty Development Grant -- California State University, Northridge

1993-1994 Glucksman Fellowship -- Department of History, The College of William & Mary

1992-1993 Dissertation Fellowship -- McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania

Courses Taught

At Mississippi State University --

Graduate:  Colloquium in Colonial and Revolutionary America

  Colloquium in American Material Culture

  Colloquium:  Introduction to Public History  

Undergraduate:  Early US History (US history survey)

  Historiography & Historical Methods

  Colonial America

  Revolutionary America

  Immigration and Ethnicity in the US

Honors College:  The Quest II: From the West to the Wider World

At Muhlenberg College –

Undergraduate:  Colonial America

  Revolutionary America

  U.S. Constitutional History

  Women’s America

  African American History

  The Atlantic World

  The American Frontier

  American Slavery

  Research Methods

  Oral History 

  Coming to America

  Cultural Encounters and American Identity



First Year Seminars:  There’s No Place Like Home

  The American Frontier

  Living in a Material World

At California State University, Northridge --

Graduate:  Early American Graduate Seminar

Undergraduate:  Colonial America      American Revolution

  The Early American Frontier

  Colonial Chesapeake

  Gender in Early America

  US History Survey I

Professional Associations

SERVICE & PROFESSIONAL LEADERSHIP

PROFESSIONAL SERVICE

LEADERSHIP in PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

2017-present Council Member –  Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (SEASECS)

2009-2015 Editorial Board Member – Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

2008-2011 Council Member – Pennsylvania Historical Association

2008 Program Chair – Pennsylvania Historical Association Conference, Bethlehem

2007 Program Committee Member – Pennsylvania Historical Association Conference, State College

1999 Article Prize Committee – Klein Article Prize Committee, Pennsylvania Historical Association

1998 Local Arrangements Chair -- Western Association of Women Historians Annual Conference, Pasadena

MANUSCRIPT REVIEWS

2000-present Article Reviewer – I have reviewed article submissions for national & regional journals, including:

▪ Journal of American History

▪ William & Mary Quarterly

▪ Journal of the Early Republic

▪ Early American Studies

▪ Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies

▪ Journal of American Ethnic History

▪ The Public Historian

▪ Book History

▪ Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

▪ Pennsylvania History

2014 Textbook Reviewer – for James Oakes, Of the People, Oxford University Press

2006 Textbook Reviewer – America: History of our Nation, Prentice-Hall Publishers

2008 Curriculum Evaluator – AP US History Curriculum

CONSULTING

2007 Grant Consultant – for grant “Into the Backcountry: Ulster Migrants, Merchants, and Entrepreneurs” Center for Ulster Migrations, Cultures and Societies, Virginia Tech

2006 Grant Consultant -- NEH funded planning grant for exhibit “Paint, Pattern & People,” Winterthur Museum & Library