Academic Positions

West Virginia University - Morgantown, WV

Assistant Director and Service Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Fall 2020 - Present 

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Avila University – Kansas City, MO

Associate Professor of History, 2018 – 2020

(Inaugural) Director of the Avila Honors Program, 2019 – 2020

Director of Study Abroad Programs, 2019 – 2020

Affiliate Faculty of Women’s and Gender Studies, 2012 – 2020

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Avila University – Kansas City, MO

Assistant Professor of History, 2012 – 2018

     

Saint Mary’s College – Notre Dame, IN

Visiting Assistant Professor of History and Women’s Studies, 2011 – 2012

Education

PhD in American Culture Studies, August 2010

Bowling Green State University – Bowling Green, OH

Primary Field: Early American History

Secondary Fields: Latin America

Dissertation: “’I Laid my Hands on a Gorgeous Cannibal Woman:’ Anthropophagy in the Imperial Imagination, 1492 – 1763”

        

Graduate Certificate in Ethnic Studies, August 2010

Bowling Green State University – Bowling Green, OH

 

Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies, August 2010

Bowling Green State University – Bowling Green, OH

 

M.A. in American Culture Studies, August 2006

Bowling Green State University

 

B.A. in American Studies and Ancient Studies, May 2002

University of Maryland, Baltimore County – Baltimore, MD

 

Publications and Manuscripts

Monographs

  • Insatiable Appetites: Imperial Encounters with Cannibals and the North Atlantic World. Part of the Early American Places series. New York University Press. Hardback edition: 2015. Paperback edition: 2017.

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Peer- Reviewed Journal Articles

  • “Mary Kittamaquund Brent, ‘The Pocahontas of Maryland:’ Sex, Marriage and Diplomacy in the 17th century Chesapeake.” Early American Studies, vol. 19, no 1 (Winter 2021): 24-63.  

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Chapters in Edited Collections

  • “Sex and Cannibalism: The Politics of Carnal Relations between Europeans and American ‘Anthropophagites.’” Forthcoming in To Feast on Us as Their Prey: Cannibalism in the Early Modern Atlantic edited by Rachel Herrmann (University of Arkansas Press. Available February 2019). Winner of the 2020 Association for the Study of Food and Society Edited Anthology Book Award. 

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Other Peer-Reviewed Publications:

 

Book Reviews:

  • Journal of American History, vol. 108, no. 3 (December 2021), 574-575. Review of Prieto, Laura R. and Stephen R. Berry, eds. Crossings and Encounters: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Atlantic World. The Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World Series. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2020.

  • Tortorici, Zeb. Sins Against Nature: Sex and Archives in Colonial New Spain. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. The Journal of American History (forthcoming)

  • Yaremko, Jason. Indigenous Passages to Cuba. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2016. The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History, vol. 75, no. 2 (April 2018).

  • Davies, Surekha. Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters. Cambridge University Press, 2016. Journal of Jesuit Studies, vol. 5, issue 1 (2018).  

  • Curtis M. Hinsley and David R. Wilcox, eds. Coming of Age in Chicago: the 1893 World’s Fair and the Coalescence of American Anthropology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. Journal of American History vol. 103, no. 3 (December 2016).

  • Githire, Njeri. Cannibal Writes: Eating Others in Caribbean and Indian Ocean Women’s Writing. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015. New West Indian Guide, vol. 90, Issue 3-4 (2016).

  • Eustace, Nicole. Passion is the Gale: Emotion, Power, and the Coming of the American Revolution. Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2008. Journal of American Studies, vol. 44, issue 1 (February 2010).

  • Miller, Christopher L. The French Atlantic Triangle: Literature and Culture of the Slave Trade. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. Atlantic Studies: Literary, Cultural, and Historical Perspectives, vol. 6, issue 1 (April 2009).

  • Weaver-Hightower, Rebecca. Empire Islands: Castaways, Cannibals, and Fantasies of Conquest. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Atlantic Studies: Literary, Cultural, and Historical Perspectives, vol. 5, issue 1 (April 2008)

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Works in Progress

  • “The Colonial Scientist as Pied Piper: The Appetites of D. Carleton Gajdusek in Papua New Guinea.” Proposal accepted by editors of “Disease and Exploration” special issue of Terrae Incognitae.

  • The Pied Piper of New Guinea: The Sexual and Scientific Appetites of D. Carleton Gajdusek. Book proposal in progress for trade press submission.

  • “The Inheritance of ‘Princess’ Mary Kittamaquund Brent: Piscataway Matrilineality and Tayac Succession in a Cross-Cultural Context.” Article in preparation.

  • “’Margaret Brent, Spinster:’ Marital Status, Catholic Identity, and Power in Colonial Maryland.” Journal article in progress.

  • Spinsters and Bachelors: Opting out of Sex in Early America. Book project in progress.

Fellowships and Awards

  • Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas, Visiting Regional Faculty Fellow, (June 2022)

  • Avila University Distinguished Scholar for 2017-2018

  • Avila University Competitive Faculty Scholarship Grant, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019

  • Avila University History Department Travel Grant, 2015

  • Bowling Green State University, Program in American Cultural Studies nominee for Dissertation of the Year, 2010.

  • Bowling Green State University Distinguished Dissertation Fellow, Fall 2009 – Summer 2010

    • Awarded a competitive non-service dissertation fellowship

  • Bowling Green State University Graduate Assistantship, Fall 2004 – Spring 2009

    • Awarded a competitive tuition waiver and assistantship

Teaching Experience

Introductory

  • Feminist Histories and Practices 

  • Early American History Survey

  • Modern American History Survey

  • Introduction to Women’s Studies

  • Cultural Pluralism in the United States

  • African American History

  • Cultural Pluralism in the United States (Online Course)

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Upper Division

  • Sexuality in American Culture (Online Course)

  • Capstone Seminar in Women’s and Gender Studies

  • Men and Masculinities

  • American Slavery and the Slave Trade

  • Images and Realities of Gender (co-taught with Dr. Leslie Dorrough Smith, Associate Professor of Religious Studies)​

  • Sex and Sexuality in America

  • Historical Research

  • Revolutionary America to 1815

  • American Women’s History

  • History Senior Thesis

  • American Frontiers

  • Revolutionary America to 1815

  • American Empires

  • Race, Sex, and Gender in the Americas, 1400-1800

  • Latin America Before Independence

  • Frontiers in American Culture (Online Course)

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Graduate

  • Teaching Practicum

  • Independent Study in Sexuality in American Culture 

  • Scholarship and Professional Development

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Selected Presentations

Invited Talks

  • “The Life and Times of Mary Kittamaquund Brent.” Presented to the Charles County Archaeological Society of Maryland – January 13, 2022

  • "'Mrs. Margaret Brent, spinster': Singleness, suffrage, and social power in colonial Maryland.” Women’s and Gender Studies Colloquium. Fairmont State University – September 23, 2020​

  • “The Specter of Cannibalism: Mechanisms of Imperialism and Power in English Captivity Narratives” at William Woods University – Fulton, MO (October 19, 2018)

  • “Cannibalism and the Process of Othering in North America.” Annual Humanities Lecture. Invited Presentation at Graceland University in Lamoni, IA – March 30, 2017

  • Presentation and Discussion of Insatiable Appetites with Upper School Students at the Barstow School in Kansas City, MO – November 10, 2016​

 

Selected Conference Presentations

  • Challenging Narratives of European Conquest and Commemoration: The Fall of Tenochtitlan, 500 Years On (Online Conference) – Center for the Study of Religion and Culture at Nottingham Trent University (UK) – (August 2021)

    • Presentation: The Colonial Scientist as Pied Piper: The Appetites of D. Carleton Gajdusek in Papua New Guinea

  • Eighteenth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities—Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore Maryland—May 2020 (cancelled due to COVID-19)

    • Panel Organizer: Agency, Exploitation, and Assimilation: Marriage and Women’s Power in Early North America

    • Presentation: Negotiating Land and Power in Piscataway Country: Contextualizing the 1644 Marriage of Mary Kittamaquund and Giles Brent

  • Twenty-Fourth Annual Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture Conference – College of Willian and Mary, Williamsburg, VA – June 2018 

    •  Panel Organizer: Sex, Spinsters, and Scandal: Marriage and Power in the Greater Chesapeake

    •  Presentation: ’Margaret Brent, Spinster:’ Marital Status, Catholic Identity, and Power in Colonial Maryland.

  • (En)Gendering the Atlantic World – New York University – April 2018

    • Presentation: Mary Kittamaquund’s Body: Negotiating Sex, Diplomacy, and Religion in Early Colonial Maryland

  • Pocahontas and After – Eccles Center for American Studies at the British Library, London UK – March 2017 

    • Presentation: Sexual Diplomacy and Anglo-Indian Relations in Early Colonial Maryland: Mary Kittamaquund and the Brent Family

  • Cannibalism in the Early Modern Atlantic – University of Southampton (UK) – June 2015

    • Panel Moderator: Challenging the ‘British’ Atlantic

    • Presentation: Sex and Cannibalism: The Politics of Carnal Relations between Europeans and American ‘Anthropophagites’

  • 1619: The Making of America – Norfolk State University – Sept. 2013

    • Presentation: Cannibalism in Jamestown: Fascination, Fantasy, Fiction, and Fact

  • Race, Gender, and Sexualities in the Atlantic World – Carolina Lowcountry in the Atlantic World Program at the College of Charleston – Mar. 2012 

    • Presentation: An Examination of Gender, Sex and Empire in the Discourse of Cannibalism in the Late 15th and Early 16th Century  

  Caribbean

  • Tenth Ohio Latin Americanist Conference – Bowling Green State University – Feb. 2011

    • Presentation: Discursive Constructions of Cannibalism and Sodomy in the Conquest of Mexico

  • Latin American/Latino Studies Conference – Bowling Green State University – Mar. 2009

    • Panel Moderator: Power and Gender in Latin America

    • Presentation: The Cannibal and the Conquistador: Gendered Anxieties and Anthropophagy in the Conquest of Mexico

  • The Chimalpahin Conference 2008: Colonial and Post-Colonial Remembering and Forgetfulness (III), Special Session on Gendered Empires – Mexico City, MX – Oct. 2008

    • Presentation: ’I Laid My Hands on a Gorgeous Cannibal Woman:’ Cannibalism, Gender, and Sex, in the ‘Discovery’ of the Americas

  • Beholding Violence: A Conference on Medieval and Early Modern Culture – Bowling Green State University – Feb. 2008

    • Panel Moderator: Death as/and Spectatorship

    • Presentation: Arousing America: Cannibalism and Conquest in the ‘New World’

  • Crossing Over Symposium – Cleveland State University – Oct. 2007

    • Presentation: The Beneficent Necessity of Cannibalism: A Narrative of Cultural and National Identity

  • The Four Corners of the Atlantic, 1500-2000, Interdisciplinary Atlantic Studies Workshop – University of Michigan and Michigan State University –  May 200

    • Paper Title: “Representing the Cannibal: Gender and Cannibalism in the New World”

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Media and Community Presentations

 

Selected Campus Presentations

  • Keynote Lecture for Student Scholar Day – Avila University – April 2019

  • "Embodied Encounters between Europeans and Native Americans in the Early Modern Atlantic World." Distinguished Scholar Presentation – Avila University April 2018

  • “Women and Gender in Genre Fiction.” Roundtable discussion – Avila University – November 2017

  • “Sexual Diplomacy and Anglo-Indian Relations in Early Colonial Maryland: Mary Kittamaquund and the Brent Family” – Presentation to College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Faculty Scholarship Workgroup – February 2017

  • “Cannibalism and Imperial Power in Colonial North America” – Avila University, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Scholarship Spotlight – November 2015 

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Professional Development & University Service

West Virginia University

  • Consultant for Indigenous Appalachia exhibit in WVU Downtown Library, Spring 2022

  • Center for Women’s and Gender Studies Assistant Professor Search Committee, Fall 2021

  • Faculty Evaluation Committee (FEC) Member for Women’s and Gender Studies, Fall 2021

  • Suspension Appeals Committee, Summer 2021 – Present

  • Program Committee Member, Native American Studies, Fall 2020 – Present

  • Mentorship and Supervision of WGST Graduate Teaching Assistants, Fall 2020 – Present

  • WGST Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, Fall 2020 – Present

  • WGST Assessment Committee, Fall 2020 – Present

  • WGST New Student Orientation Committee, Fall 2020 – Present

  • WGST Webmaster, Fall 2020 – Present

  • WGST Awards Committee, Fall 2020 – Present

  • WGST Graduate Curriculum Committee, Fall 2020 – Present

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Service to the University - Avila University

  • Elected member of the Rank and Tenure Committee, Fall 2019 – Spring 2020

  • Member of Honor’s Program Task Force, Spring 2018 – Spring 2020

    • Co-writer (with Ashley Fansher) of the proposal for a new Honors Program 

  • Member of Promotion and Tenure Peer-Review Committee for Abigail Lambke (English) – Fall 2018

  • Appointed member of the University Reorganization Taskforce, Fall 2017 – Spring 2018

  • Appointed member of the Dean's Transfer Student Task Force. Avila University, Fall 2015 - 2017

  • Appointed member of the University Higher Learning Commission Accreditation Task Force on Resources, Planning, and Institutional  Effectiveness. Avila University, Fall 2015 – Present

  • Elected member of the Admissions and Academic Progress Committee. Avila University, Fall 2014 - Spring 2020

  • History Department Liaison to the School of Education. Avila University, Spring 2014 - Spring 2020

  • History Content Area Supervisor for Social Studies Secondary Education Students. Avila University, Spring 2014 – Spring 2020

  • History Department Academic Advisor. Avila University, Spring 2013 – Spring 2020

  • History Department Liaison to the Office of Marketing and Communications for the Departmental Website Redesign. Avila University, 2013

  • Women’s and Gender Studies Steering Committee. Avila University, Spring 2013 - Spring 2020

  • Women’s and Gender Studies Advisory Council. Avila University, Fall 2012 - Spring 2020

  • Avila University Faculty Assembly, Fall 2012 - Spring 2020 

    • Member of the Foundations Curriculum Revision Task Force

    • Member of First Year Seminar Task Force

  • Elected member of the American Culture Studies Advisory Board. Bowling Green State University, 2009-2010

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Service to the Profession

  • Member of the Western Association of Women Historians, 2022 – Present

  • Member of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, 2021 – Present

  • Panel Moderator for “Re-shaping Narratives of ‘Discovery’ and ‘Conquest’” at the Fall of Tenochtitlan, 500 Years On: Challenging Narratives of European Conquest and Commemoration, Nottingham Trent University (UK) – August 2021

  • Member of the National Women’s Studies Association, 2021 – Present

  • Member of Ethnohistory Society, 2021 – Present

  • Manuscript Reviewer for Journal of Early American History, Journal of American History and New England Quarterly

  • Member of the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture, 2017 – Present

  • Panel Moderator for “Decolonial Approaches” at the Pocahontas and After: Historical Culture and Transatlantic Encounters, University of London – March 2017

  • Panel Moderator for “Challenging the ‘British’ Atlantic” at the Cannibalism in the Early Modern Atlantic Conference at the University of      Southampton (UK) – June 2015​

  • Member of the American Historical Association. 2009 – Present

  • Advanced Placement US History Exam Grader, 2011 – 2014

  • Panel Moderator for “Power and Gender in Latin America” at the Latin American/Latino Studies Conference at Bowling Green State University –

  • Mar. 2009

  • Panel Moderator for “Death as/and Spectatorship” at the Beholding Violence: A Conference on Medieval and Early Modern Culture Conference at Bowling Green State University – Feb. 2008

  • Editorial assistant for Eithne Luibheid, Regional Editor for Women’s Studies International Forum. Bowling Green State University, Fall 2004 –  Spring 2005

 

Other Professional Development and Training

  • Intensive Workshop on Program Assessment, West Virginia University, Summer 2021

  • Title IX Responsible Personal Training, Avila University, Fall 2016          

  • Online Pedagogy Training, Saint Mary’s College, Spring 2012

  • Member of the Professional Development Group “Writing Visual Culture” at the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society/ Bowling Green

  • State University, 2006 – 2008

  • Online Facilitation Training conducted by Interactive Distance Education for all Learners (IDEAL). Bowling Green State University, Spring 2007

  • Archaeological Lab Assistant, R. Christopher Goodwin and Associates (Frederick, MD)

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Professional References

Available Upon Request