Education
The University of Texas at Austin
- PhD, United States History, expected May 2019
- Dissertation: “To Cure a Sinful Nation: ‘Conversion Therapy’ and the Making of Modern America, 1920 to Today”
- Committee: Drs. Robert Abzug, Jacqueline Jones, Jennifer Graber, and Lauren Gutterman
Teachers College, Columbia University
- ABD, Social Studies Education, 2014
Clark University
- BA, History, Magna Cum Laude & Highest Honors, 2006
- MA, History, 2007
External Fellowships, Grants, & Awards
University of California, Riverside, Holstein Dissertation Fellowship in Queer and/or Transgender Studies in Religion (2018-2019)
ONE Archives Foundation, LGBTQ Research Fellowship (2018)
Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, Presidents’ Travel Award (2018)
Southern Association for the History of Medicine and Science, Student Travel Grant (2018)
American Historical Association, Albert J. Beveridge Grant (2017)
Cornell University, Phil Zwickler Memorial Grant in the History of Human Sexuality (2017)
Harvard University, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women Dissertation Grant (2017)
Massachusetts Historical Society, New England Regional Fellowship (2017)
Society for U.S. Intellectual History, Henry F. May Award (2017)
University of Chicago, Robert L. Platzman Memorial Fellowship (2017)
Virginia Theological Seminary, African American Episcopal Historical Collection Travel Grant (2017)
Yale University, Funded Runner-Up, LGBT Studies Research Fellowship (2017)
American Historical Association, Career Diversity Department Grant (Collaborator) (2016)
Columbia University, Libraries Research Award (2016)
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Albert M. Greenfield Fellowship (2016)
Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, Lynn E. May Research Study Grant (2016)
University of Minnesota, Elmer L. Andersen Research Scholars Award (2016)
University of North Texas Libraries, Special Collections Fellowship (2016)
Walton Foundation, Future Leaders Scholarship (2002-2006)
Internal Fellowships, Grants, & Awards
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/UT, Engaged Scholar Initiative Completion Fellowship (2018-2019)
The University of Texas at Austin, The Graduate School, Professional Development Award (2018)
The University of Texas at Austin, Faculty Innovation Center, Teaching Commendation (2018)
The University of Texas at Austin, Division of Diversity and Community Engagement Graduate Student Travel Award (2018)
The University of Texas at Austin, History Department Writing Fellowship (2017-2018)
The University of Texas at Austin, The Graduate School, Professional Development Award (2017)
The University of Texas at Austin, History Department Research Fellowship (2016-2017)
The University of Texas at Austin, History Department Research Grant (2016)
The University of Texas at Austin, History Department Research Grant (2015)
The University of Texas at Austin, History Department Summer Fellowship (2015)
The University of Texas at Austin, Five-Year Recruitment Package (2014-2019)
The University of Texas at Austin, History Department Academic Year Fellowship (2014-2015)
Teachers College, Columbia University, Diversity Research Fellowship (2012)
Teachers College, Columbia University, Three-Year Recruitment Package (2011-2013)
Clark University, Master’s Tuition Award (2006-2007)
Clark University, George A. Billias Prize in American History (2006)
Clark University, Academic Achievement Scholarship (2002-2006)
Peer-Reviewed Publications
“Occupy Wall Street as a Curriculum of Space.” The Journal of Social Studies Research. 2013. Co-written with Sandra Schmidt.
Public History Writings
“How Would Brett Kavanaugh Rule on Conversion Therapy.” Washington Post. July 2018.
“The Horrors of ‘Ex-Gay’ Therapy Once Involved Ice-Pick Lobotomies.” The Advocate. June 2018.
“‘Conversion Therapy’ and the Culture Wars.” Los Angeles Blade. April 2018.
“‘Doing’ History in the Modern U.S. Survey: Teaching with and Analyzing Academic Articles.” Process: A Blog for American History. September 2017. [Reposted by Not Even Past, October 2017.]
“Transforming ‘Conversion Therapy’ amid the Sexual Revolution.” The Society of U.S. Intellectual History Blog. August 2017.
“‘They are Coming for Us’: Conversion Therapy, Now and Then.” AHA Today. July 2017. [Invited]
“Digital Teaching: A Mid-Semester Timeline.” Not Even Past. February 2017.
“Finding Hitler (in All the Wrong Places?”). Not Even Past. January 2017.
“The Blemished Archive: How Documents Get Saved.” Not Even Past. November 2016.
“Another Perspective on the Texas Textbook Controversy.” Not Even Past. May 2015. [Reposted as “The Texas Textbook Controversy: It’s Part of a Long, Awful Tradition” by History News Network, May 2015.]
“Class, Occupy Wall Street, and the New York City Draft Riots.” Social Science Docket 13(2). Winter 2013.
Reviews
McNabb, Charlie. Nonbinary Gender Identities: History, Culture, Resources. Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies. Forthcoming.
“Nature Boy.” ESPN 30 for 30. Not Even Past. November 2017.
Hedstrom, Matthew. The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century. Not Even Past. January 2016.
Grogan, Jessica. Encountering America: Humanistic Psychology, Sixties Culture, and the Shaping of the Modern Self. Not Even Past. September 2015.
Rodgers, Daniel T. Age of Fracture. Not Even Past. March 2015.“Abolitionism and the Search for a Useable Past.” H-CivWar. September 2014. Review of Andrew Delbanco, editor, The Abolitionist Imagination.
Thomas Borstelmann, The 1970s: A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality. The Councilor: A Journal of the Social Studies. 2013.
Allen Guelzo. Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The Councilor: A Journal of the Social Studies. 2012.
Encyclopedia Contributions
“Conversion Therapy.” Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. New York: Springer. Under Review.
“Clinton, Bill and Hillary.” Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories in American History. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. Forthcoming.
“Tony Beaver.” American Myths, Legends, and Tall Tales: An Encyclopedia of American Folklore. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2016.
“Rape.” The Social History of the American Family: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2014.
Academic Presentations
“Raising Heterosexual Children: Conversion Therapists and the Modern American Family, 1945-2000.” Dallas Area Society of Historians Workshop. Southern Methodist University. January 2019.
“Threats to Your Life: Gender, Embodied Therapy, and the AIDS Crisis, 1980-1993.” Lockridge History Workshop. University of Montana. October 2018.
“The Puritanical Psychoanalytic Police: The Legal System, Homosexuality, and Therapy, 1930-1960.” Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association. Santa Clara University. Santa Clara, CA. August 2018.
“Fostering Historical Empathy in the Age of Social Media.” Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association. Santa Clara University. Santa Clara, CA. August 2018.
“Born That Way: The Search for the Gay Gene Amid the U.S. Culture Wars.” History and Philosophy of Science Colloquium & the Symposium on Gender, History, and Sexuality. The University of Texas at Austin. Austin, TX. March 2018.
“‘Abandoning Our Moral Obligations’: Gay Conversion in the World of Professional Psychiatry, 1973-1987.” Southern Association for the History of Medicine and Science. Augusta, GA. February 2018.
“Raising Heterosexual Children: Conversion Therapists and the Modern American Family.” Workshop on Disciplining the Modern Family: Gender, State and Society. Tel Aviv University. Tel Aviv, Israel. December 2017. [Invited]
“Curing the Fallen: Women Conversion Therapists, Freudianism, and Prayer in the 1970s and 1980s.” The Society of U.S. Intellectual History. Dallas, TX. October 2017.
“The King of the Wild Frontier: Davy Crockett Almanacs, Bourgeois Emasculation, and Frontier Masculinity in Antebellum America.” The Society for Appalachian Historians. The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. May 2016.
“From Sin to Science?: Conversion Therapy as an Intellectual Movement in Post-World War II America.” The Center for Women’s and Gender Studies Graduate Student Conference. The University of Texas at Austin. Austin, TX. March 2016.
“The King of the Wild Frontier: Davy Crockett Almanacs, Bourgeois Emasculation, and Frontier Masculinity in Antebellum America.” The Symposium on Gender, History, and Sexuality. The University of Texas at Austin. Austin, TX. March 2015.
“The Pedagogy of Bondage: Laboring over Emotional Memories of United States Slavery in Lincoln and Django Unchained.” National Council for the Social Studies. St. Louis, MO. November 2013.
“Educators, Communities, and Activism: Organizing and Occupying.” American Education Research Association (AERA). San Francisco, CA. April 2013. Co-presented with Sandra Schmidt.
“Occupy Wall Street as a Curriculum of Space.” National Council for the Social Studies. Seattle, WA. November 2012. Co-presented with Sandra Schmidt.
“‘Each One of Us Was Several’: Envisioning a Deleuze-Guattarian Social Studies.” National Council for the Social Studies. Seattle, WA. November 2012.
Invited Talks
“To Cure a Sinful Nation: Conversion Therapy and the Making of Modern America, 1920 to Today”
- ONE Archives, November 2018
- Virginia Theological Seminary, April 2018
- Harvard University’s Schlesinger Library on the History of Women, September 2017.
- Historical Society of Pennsylvania, February 2017.
- University of North Texas, October 2016.
Conference Panels Organized
The Paternal State: Legal Regulations of Gender and Sexuality in the Modern United States. Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association. Santa Clara University. August 2018.
Conference Panel Chair or Commentator
Chair, “King Tut, Cowboys, Beer, and Hippies: A History of Utah.” Utah State University, Undergraduate Research Capstone Conference. Logan, UT. November 2017.
Commentator, “‘Doing’ Gender History: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges.” The Symposium on Gender, History, and Sexuality. The University of Texas at Austin. September 2015.
University Teaching Experience
The University of Texas at Austin
- Assistant Instructor, U.S. History since 1865 (Summer 2017)
- Teaching Assistant, U.S. History since 1865 with Dr. Megan Seaholm (Summer 2016)
- Supplemental Instructor, Intro to American Indian History with Dr. Erika Bsumek (Spring 2016)
- Supplemental Instructor, U.S. History to 1865 with Dr. Robert Olwell (Fall 2015)
- Teaching Assistant, U.S. History since 1865 with Dr. Storm Miller (Spring 2015)
OnRamps, The University of Texas at Austin
- History Assessment Affiliate, U.S. History to 1865 & U.S. History since 1865 (2017-2018)
Teachers College, Columbia University
- Instructor, U.S. Constitution and Civic Decision Making (Spring 2014)
- Instructor, Advanced Methods of Teaching Social Studies (Spring 2014)
- Instructor, Teaching of Social Studies (Fall 2013)
- Instructor, Student Teaching Seminar (Fall 2013)
- Instructor, Gendering the Social Studies (Summer 2013)
- Instructor, Teaching of Social Studies (Summer 2013)
Manhattanville College
- Instructor, Introductory Research Methods: The Teacher as Researcher (Fall 2012)
Secondary Teaching Experience
The Oxford Academy
- Teacher, The Atlantic World (2009-2010)
- Teacher, The Cold War (2009-2010)
- Teacher, American Culture Since World War II (2008-2010)
- Teacher, Honors U.S. History (2008-2009)
- Teacher, Economics (2008-2009)
- Teacher, Caribbean Piracy (Summer 2008)
- Teacher, American Maritime History (2008-2009)
- Teacher, The Civil War (2007-2009)
- Teacher, U.S. History (2007-2008)
- Teacher, Modern World History (2007-2008)
Guest Lectures
“Religious Freedom in America Today.” RS 316U: History of Religion in the U.S. with Dr. Jennifer Graber. The University of Texas at Austin. April 2016.
“Davy Crockett Saves the Earth from Halley’s Comet?: From Sources to Argument.” HIS 317N: Thinking Like a Historian with Dr. Julie Hardwick. The University of Texas at Austin. April 2015.
Academic Advising Experience
Student Athletics, The University of Texas at Austin, Academic Mentor (2015-2016)
Program in Social Studies, Teachers College, Columbia University, Student Teaching Coordinator (2013-2014); Associate Student Teaching Coordinator (2012-2013); and Academic Advisor (2012-2014)
Clark University, Academic Probation Advisor (2006-2007)
Public History Positions
Teaching U.S. History, Writer/Contributor (2018 – )
The Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., Archive Activist Scholar (2017 – )
New-York Historical Society, Museum Research Associate (2011-2012)
Nantucket Historical Association, Museum Educator and Curatorial Assistant (Summer 2007)
Public History Internships
WNET/PBS, Historical Researcher and Curriculum Coordinator (Summer 2011)
New York Council for the Humanities, Public Programs Intern (Spring 2011)
Brooklyn Historical Society, Research Intern (2010-2011)
Service
Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association, Annual Meeting Program Committee Member (2018 & 2019)
Department of History, University of Texas at Austin, Graduate Council (2015-2016)
Program in Social Studies, Teachers College, Master’s Admissions Committee (2012-2014)
Clark University, President, Phi Alpha Theta (2005-2007)
Professional Organizations & Memberships
American Historical Association
Organization of American Historians
Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, The University of Texas at Austin
Society for U.S. Intellectual History
