Education

  • Ph.D. College of William and Mary
  • M.A. Villanova University
  • B.A. University of Portland

Areas of Expertise

  • Colonial America

Background

I specialize in early American history, the American Revolution, the colonial Atlantic world, and the history of slavery. My research addresses the foundation and development of racial slavery in Anglo-America. My book, Slaves and Englishmen: Human Bondage in the Early Modern Atlantic World (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), describes how slavery shaped the way Englishmen and Anglo-Americans thought about and interacted with the world in the years before plantation slavery became commonplace in England's American colonies. I am presently at work on a new project: a multi-generational study of the Pleasants family of Virginia and the tradition of dissent in colonial America and the early United States. 

Teaching

I teach the following courses:

  • HIS 302 American History to 1877
  • HIS 322 The Age of Discovery
  • HIS 340 Colonial America
  • HIS 341 Era of the American Revolution
  • HIS 262 Piracy in the Americas
  • HIS 441 Natives and Newcomers
  • HIS 440 Slavery in the Americas