Simmons College

Faculty Member, History

Professor of History and of Women's and Gender Studies; Chair, Department of History

College of Arts and Sciences

About

My research interests center on women and gender, especially at the turn of the twentieth century; visual culture; and cultural history. I teach a wide spectrum of undergraduate and graduate courses in American history, gender history, race and ethnicity, the history of sexuality, historical methodology, archives and history, memory studies, and cross-cultural imperialism.

My first book, At Home in the Studio: The Professionalization of Women Artists in America (Harvard University Press, 2001) studies how women painters, sculptors, and illustrators created a professional identity for themselves in the face of exclusion. I recently wrote a document project for "Women and Social Movements" about nineteenth-century American women sculptors and how they used art to contribute to the abolitionist and women's rights movements.

My primary current research concerns American women, colonized women, and imperialism during the era of the Spanish-American War. I consider the relationship of women nurses, journalists, teachers, missionaries, philanthropists, and activists to the advent of American imperialism in the Caribbean and Pacific from 1898 through the 1920s.

I am also at work on a book surveying "Women in America: Issues and Controversies" for classroom use, which combines narrative and analysis with primary source excerpts.

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