I am a PhD Candidate in Early Modern European History. The following link will take you to my UCSC History Dept Profile.

My dissertation, A Notorious Account of Murtherers, Robbers, and Sporting Ladies: the Visual Culture of English Broadside Ballads, 1600-1800, provides and interdisciplinary analysis of broadside ballads in Early Modern England. I argue that in a culture of varying levels of literacy, what cheap prints looked like was as important as the text on the page. My work demonstrates that the illustrative aspects of ballads were more deeply integrated in early modern visual culture than current studies suggest, and provides a consideration of the varying strategies printers used to facilitate their customer’s interaction with cheap print - a new(ish) technology in the early modern period. I have been awarded the UCSC Institute for Humanities Research Dissertation Year Fellowship to support the completion of my dissertation by June 2012.

I am a social and cultural historian with interests in religion in history, the history of gender, women’s history, and art and performance history. I am also dedicated to incorporating interdisciplinary methods and materials in my classes, and have been part of the growing Digital Humanities community at the UC for the past several years. I strive to combine all of these interests in teaching and assignments. When possible, I prefer to facilitate discussion-based teaching and learning. I encourage students to take ownership of their classes, while providing the framework to develop the critical thinking, writing and reading skills that are central to the historical discipline.  My writing guidelines/parameters, Grading Rubric, and my syllabus for a 2010 summer course on Tudor/Stuart England can be found above.

My minor field is Jewish World History, which is an attempt to think through Philip D. Curtin’s work on cross-cultural trade, but from a cultural and social historical perspective.  The two larger World History projects that I have worked on/am currently working on are my website on the Beaver Hat in World History, and a summer school class entitled “Food in World History” (originally taught in summer 2009 in collaboration with Dr. Katie Simonton- syllabus available upon request).

Note: The Beaver Hat in World History, “Fashionable Felted Fur,” (Winner 2nd place 2006 Graduate History Paper from the Southeastern World Historical Association) has moved! You can find it here.

2011-2012

I will be writing from Tucson, Arizona and am a visiting scholar at the University of Arizona. Please feel free to contact me via email.

In the spare time I carve out for myself I cook, run, and knit.