Positions:
Professor of Colonial American History and American Women’s History;
Affiliated Professor of Women’s Studies
Affiliated Professor of African-American Studies
Postdoctoral Research Associate, McNeil Center for Early American Studies.

Research and Teaching Interests:
British North America during the “long” eighteenth century, ca. 1680-1830, utilizing autobiographical writings and demographic, urban, social, economic, cultural, and medical history to recreate the experiences of women, African Americans, and working people.

Representative Publications:
“Infant Mortality, Gender, and the Standard of Living of the Poor,” Down and Out in Early America, ed. Smith, Penn State, forthcoming.

“and women rule over them”: Rough Music in Philadelphia, 1778,” Riot and Revelry in Early America, ed. Bill Pencak and Simon Newman, Penn State, forthcoming.

“Colonial Pennsylvania,” The New History of Pennsylvania, ed. Randall Miller and Pencak, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission/Penn State, forthcoming.

The Diary of Hannah Callender Sansom, ed. with Karin A. Wulf. University of Pennsylvania, forthcoming.

“Colds, Worms, and Hysteria: Menstrual Regulation in Eighteenth-Century America,” in Regulating Menstruation, ed. Etienne van de Walle and Elisha Renne. University of Chicago, 2001.

“Inscribing Experience: An American Working Woman and a British Gentlewoman Encounter Jamaica’s Slave Society, 1803-1805.” William and Mary Quarterly, 2001. With Roderick A. McDonald.

“Revolutionary Bodies: Women and the Fertility Transition in the Mid-Atlantic, 1760-1830,” Journal of American History, 1998.

“Seasoning and Society: Racial Differences in Mortality in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia,” William and Mary Quarterly, 1994.

“Lost, Hidden, Obstructed, and Repressed: Contraceptive and Abortive Technology in the Early Delaware Valley,” in Early American Technology, ed. Judith A. McGaw. University of North Carolina, 1994.

“The Infortunate: The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley, An Indentured Servant, ed. with Billy G. Smith. Penn State, 1992.

“The Swift Progress of Population:” A Study of Philadelphia’s Growth, 1642-1859. American Philosophical Society, 1991.

“’If I Didn’t Have My Sewing Machine:’ Women and Sewing Machine Technology,” with Ava Baron, in A Needle, a Bobbin, a Strike: Women Needleworkers, ed. Joan M. Jensen and Sue Davidson. Temple University, 1986.

Notes:
Twice awarded Andrew W. Mellon fellowships, past president of the Pennsylvania Historical Association, Chair of the Executive Council and the Advisory Council of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, served on fellowship committees for the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Colonial Society of Pennsylvania, the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, and Director, Bibliography of Pennsylvania History Project.