Editor’s note: This is the twentieth entry in a series on how historians—especially contingent historians and those employed outside of tenure-track academia—do the work of history. If you know of someone we should interview, or would like to be interviewed yourself, send an email with the subject line HOW I DO HISTORY to pitches@contingentmag.org.
Allison Horrocks (@allisonhorrocks on Twitter) is a public historian, part-time podcaster, and Park Ranger. Here’s how she does history.
What’s your current position?
I am a public historian. I work as a Park Ranger at Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park. This park is made up of six separate sites across Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Most days, I work on the campus of Old Slater Mill, the first successful cotton spinning mill in the United States. My office is in an old stone building in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. I started this position in August 2021. Previously, I worked at Lowell National Historical Park in Lowell, Massachusetts (2017-2021) and before that, I was a seasonal ranger at Blackstone NPS.
I began applying for the National Park Service (NPS) and other government jobs in 2015. I had absolutely no luck at all with even getting an interview. After 40-plus failed applications, I went to a hiring session hosted at a conference. It was during the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. The topic was how to get a government job. This did not appear to be a hot topic, because I was the only one who showed up for this session in an overly air conditioned hotel meeting room. But the ninety minutes I spent there were fortuitous. I happened to meet a very high level historian within the NPS, and this session gave me more direction.
Not long after that conference, I had a discussion with one of my professors at the University of Connecticut (UConn). The faculty member connected with my first NPS mentor, who was a Park Ranger in the Blackstone Valley. I quickly learned that people in this agency were kind, open about the challenges of securing full-time work, and most important of all, dedicated to their careers and to mentorship. This was not the end of my journey applying for government jobs, but it is when I figured out what path I needed to be on, going forward.
Tell us about the National Park Service (NPS) and what it is like to work there.
For starters, I wear a lot of green. When I am out and about and properly attired in my uniform, I can be seen in a big straw or felt hat. The hat selection varies seasonally, not based on my mood. This ensemble proves to be a conversation starter. Even when I am not at work, such as when I’m on my way to a site or breaking to get food, I get asked what my job is and/or hear a joke that I did not ask for about bears. After follow-up questions are answered, some people are excited to learn that there is a national park of some kind near their home or favorite coffee shop; others ask if I am a real ranger. This question might be coming from people who did not know such jobs existed in our area, or from people who are just surprised I have such a job.
When I am at work, and in a more understandable context, I get asked different questions about the uniform and hear other kinds of comments. This past weekend, three separate parties told me I have a “cool job” in the span of a single afternoon. Those who presume my job may be cool, but my park is not, is another common refrain. I have been asked a few times what I did (presumably wrong) to end up at a park that is “only” four acres large. It is not always the place or time to let them know that I would be absolutely lost in a swamp, preserve, or deep in the mountains. It is however the time to let them know how proud I am that I get to take on the challenge of being a storyteller for NPS. Yes, I answer a lot of mundane questions (we can argue over whether knowing how to find a bathroom is actually mundane another time) but I also get to talk about concepts of work, labor history, and the lives of ordinary people. That last part just might be my favorite of all.
I started off by talking about the uniform because it is both iconic and something that I think about on a daily basis. The first time I received my uniform, I was worried that it did not fit. I now know this is a nearly universal experience within NPS. I made a decision to work for the government, in part, because my research inspired me to pursue public service. I had worked in private museums and in higher education, but I was most passionate about educational practices that could be deeply embedded in historic landscapes. I don’t think that my work experience is typical (aside from the uniform bit) because there is not really a typical experience within the agency. I feel very honored that I get paid to do something that other people long to do while pursuing other careers. I smile when I’m asked about bears, and being a real ranger, and even when my hat does not fit just right, because those questions and moments are opportunities where for the most part, another person actually wants to learn and talk in good faith. We need so much more of that, and if a wide brimmed Stetson gets us going, I’m content to start there.
Allison standing with colleagues and community partners for a walking tour in March 2020. Notably, this was early March 2020.
What does a work day or work week look like for Allison Horrocks?
Every single week is different for me, and that’s a big part of why I like what I do for a living. Most days, I do some kind of “frontline” museum work. This may include giving a tour or working with visitors in some other way. Prior to the pandemic, I spent a lot of time at partner events or doing work with external organizations. Some of that has been slowly returning, but in general, there’s still fewer events happening out in the world, at least for what I do.
In addition to working directly with visitors, partners, and other groups, I have periods where I am doing more “behind-the-scenes” or planning work. This might entail conducting research or visiting with community partners. As with many jobs, I also have desk work – answering emails, keeping track of paperwork, and making plans for the future. Some of this has increased with the pandemic. With more people working from home, I know that I have spent more hours sending emails or chatting on Microsoft Teams than I have in the past.
I am also on social media just about every day. I currently write content for Facebook and Twitter for Blackstone River Valley NHP, the park where I am employed now. I have also written content for Instagram in the past. When I am not making posts, I might be checking up on how the content we’ve put out is doing that day or week. I also spend time looking at other accounts and pages for trends. At one point, I had partial or full control over 18 social media accounts and pages. Of course, some of this is personal, and some of this is also for the podcast (more on that later). Doing this type of work for a job, podcast, or other organization is different from just running your own account. It requires a skill set and way of thinking that I wish people talked about more in the profession.
If you visit Blackstone, you might even see Allison on a park sign.
Have you always been interested in history?
The short answer is no. History was not my favorite subject in school and I have distinct memories of not liking some of my history classes. I spent a lot of time memorizing information that did not feel especially useful. I did well in those classes, but I was not particularly inspired by them. This sounds heretical, but it’s important.
As strange as it might sound, I knew people taught history, but I did not really think of “historian” as any more a reasonable job than “chocolate bar tester.” Of course I know now that both are real, but as a younger person, there was nothing planted in my brain to suggest that I’d become a historian. Or a Park Ranger. Looking back, I think I just presumed those fields were too far away from my own experience to be “real.”
When I was younger, I loved English classes as well as science courses. I started college pre-med, and wanted to be a psychiatrist (this replaced my earlier ambition of being a florist–I know, I was all over the place). Even when I started studying history, and it became my favorite subject in college, I knew that I did not want to be a history teacher. Nor did I really want to be a professor of history, when it came down to it. Still, I loved research and education in other settings, and wanted to be a historian. I think it’s important to note that I did not have a clear path laid out in front of me. While I didn’t love history in my younger years, I was always nosy and I have liked to read and be read to for as long as I can remember. In the long run, I think those qualities might be most important.
A young Allison visiting the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
What is your earliest memory of a historical event?
I was inexplicably invested in the life of Mikhail Gorbachev at a young age. As a child of the late 1980s, I named one of my favorite baby dolls after him. I was also fascinated by true crime. In addition to compulsively watching shows such as Dateline, I remember knowing a lot more about Amy Fisher in 1992/1993 than I needed to at age six.
An event that continues to stick in my mind is the 1999 Columbine shooting. I happened to be home sick that day (sick as in, I didn’t want to go to school sick, but not super sick). I had the television on and was half-asleep on the couch when the story broke. What continues to surprise me now, as an adult, is how much that event shocked me as a younger person. I think it’s hard to explain how big that event seemed to me, and how much this type of shooting has become almost expected, decades later.
Tell us about your undergraduate and graduate experiences (BA/MA/PhD).
I earned my BA in History and American Studies from Trinity College in Hartford, CT in 2009.1 You could not pay me enough to go back to elementary school, high school, or heck, even my mid-20s again. I would gladly go back to my college years, however, if time transport was possible. I loved the learning environment at my college and studying abroad. In 2008, I chose to attend Royal Holloway in England for a semester. It was a challenging, exciting, and really intellectually stimulating period in my life.
After college, I went straight to graduate school. I started my MA at the University of Connecticut in 2009 and completed that degree in 2011. Later, I earned graduate certificates in Graduate Teaching (now called College Instruction) as well as in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Both have served me well, and I am so glad I could take additional outside courses during my years at UConn. I defended my dissertation in March 2016.
Flemmie P. Kittrell, who earned her Ph.D. at Cornell University in the 1930s, visiting later in life during the 1970s. Photo provided by Allison Horrocks.
Who is Flemmie P. Kittrell? Tell us about her and how she intersects with your research.
My dissertation examined the life of Dr. Flemmie P. Kittrell, the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in Home Economics in the United States. If your first question is “when did that happen?” I can readily supply that answer, along with her Wikipedia page. If you are curious as to why, and how, that happened, my dissertation is available online. Generally, I would classify the project as a microhistory.2My dissertation tells the story of one individual (in relatively deep detail) and also explores the contours of a cohort of women who made change in unexpected ways. If I were defending the project to academics on an elevator pitch, I’d add that it challenges conceptions of “the domestic” and adds Home Economists to the conversation on mid-century international relations, but we are not on an elevator.
I came into graduate school with this general topic in mind. On my research trips, I studied Kittrell’s papers and related departmental happenings in Home Economics across more than a dozen archives. I visited institutions of higher education (including Tuskegee University, Cornell University, and Hampton University) as well as the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, Rockefeller Archive Center, and more. As many historians do, I ate a lot of granola bars while standing by lockers and I was also treated to pork chops by one especially kind archivist.
During my years of research, I observed patterns in how prominent home economists talked to and about one another. During one especially memorable moment, I got to hear Kittrell’s voice on an old recording. At several sites, I combed through thick sheets of paper written about “practice babies” (children temporarily raised on college campuses for the purpose of instruction) and endless photography files of the pilots for Head Start. I got lost in diaries written during her missions around the world. I found myself startled when reading scraps of microfilm I thought would have nothing much to teach me. Toward the end, when I read Kittrell’s plans for the final place she decided to call home, I wondered what she thought of her neighbors, and new friends, and imagined her careful cataloging of some of her own records, for posterity.
Upon finding conflicting information about her final resting place, I reached out to strangers on Reddit about finding her gravesite. Though some obituaries had included details about a particular cemetery, I had read elsewhere that such a thing was not in line with her wishes. When someone visited the cemetery for me and reported back that no, there was no such person named on a stone there, I felt somewhat relieved. It was an odd thing to feel for someone I’d never met. Some small part of me still wanted to get in my car and be sure, but I settled for this kind Redditor’s first-person account. Writing about Dr. Kittrell was a privilege and I like to think I did not lose sight of that during my project.
This project did not stem from my own interest in domesticity; if anything, it’s quite the opposite. I first got interested in Home Economics history in college when I saw Mental Hygiene films with faculty members from Home Economics departments at major colleges and universities. I became compelled to write a dissertation on Home Economics when a lot of the material I found on these women (and a very small number of men) was loaded with snark and disdain.
This is one of Allison’s favorite photos from her research. The chart of home economists who’d come to study at Cornell or who had left Cornell to work in the world was something faculty were quite proud of. Kittrell is pictured with Home Economics leadership. She is on the far left. Photo provided by Allison Horrocks.
Besides Flemmie Kittrell and Home Economics in the 20th century, what are some other research topics of yours? Are they similar or much different from your dissertation topic?
For full transparency, I should say that I do not research Home Economics full time, or even in passing, anymore. Much of what I research now comes from an organic need at my job or some personal interest. My search history would show that I spend a lot of time going down genealogical rabbit holes and very little time keeping up with the history of Home Economics.
Going back a few years, right after finishing my dissertation, I spent time researching Home Economics and World War I, particularly in regards to the “homefront.” I didn’t delve into this as deeply as I could have for my dissertation but I was really fascinated by this moment and the important changes happening in higher education, especially in 1917. Doing some smaller projects (including an exhibit for UConn and a series of presentations) right after graduate school allowed me to learn more about local agricultural work but more importantly, granted me much needed work experience.
Since then, I’ve generally been interested in histories of work. In the past few years, I’ve been more focused on women’s industrial work in the 19th and 20th centuries. This pivot came about because of my last two jobs. I’ve spent a lot of time around industrial machinery and for a few years, had my dream assignment of working in a mid-19th century women’s boarding house. Outside of that, I remain interested in the history of playgrounds and pursued that topic for a while. On the topic of play, for the past few years, I’ve also been working with fellow historian Mary Mahoney on a book (forthcoming) about American Girl.
Americans Girls podcast logo.
Speaking of American Girl, tell us about the American Girls podcast. How long have you been doing the show and where can we find it?
The podcast American Girls began in 2019. I am a co-host of the show alongside Mary, who is also a historian from UConn. We explore the American Girl books one by one while also talking about other aspects of the fandom. The show has featured other historians but for the most part, we get a lot of energy and inspiration from people who are not in the field.
You can find the show (which is free) on most major podcast apps, and we are hosted by Audioboom.
Our website: https://www.americangirlspod.com/
You can follow us at @agirlspod on Twitter and @americangirlspodcast on Instagram.
One of American Girls’ many listeners. For those wondering, this is a homemade garment.
Tell us about some of the public history work you have done. Are they exhibits or digital projects? Where can we find them? And lastly, what does public history mean to you?
I am going to start with the last question. What does public history mean to me…ok, how many thousands of words do I have? Actually, my answer is quite simple. For me, it’s all about orientation. The work that I do is not any simpler or easier than any other historian’s. It is simply geared toward a specific end, and that is public consumption and use.
Years ago, I applied for a public history internship and had to explain why I thought that kind of work had value. I wrote about wanting to connect with people in a variety of ways, and how much I enjoyed learning from people during public programs. This remains true for me. I have some training in facilitated dialogues and it’s one of the aspects of public history that I consider most essential. To that end, in my time as a Park Ranger, I have contributed to a pretty wide range of walking tours and public discussion programs.
This is Allison with a top-notch Lucy Stone reenactor following a speaking program on Stone’s legacy. Lucy Stone, a 19th century radical activist, was expelled from West Brookfield’s First Congregational Church in Massachusetts. In 2017, this congregation extended an invitation to welcome Stone back to the community. It was important to church leadership not to presume that Stone would accept such an invitation, so it was not a clear-cut readmittance.. Also of note: the lights flickered at an especially poignant moment. Lucy Stone was not there, but some spirit certainly was.
Outside of face-to-face work, I’ve made content for the NPS app and developed virtual walking tours. I supervised the work on these women’s history videos in 2020, along with lots of other virtual projects. During the pivot to virtual field trips, I had an opportunity to be part of this virtual field trip. In the world of podcasting, I have had the chance to review two podcasts for the journal The Public Historian and to co-author this article on American Girls.
One of the most surprising opportunities that has come my way happened mostly by chance. Early in the pandemic, I did a kind of “ask me anything” about Temperance on National Beer Day. One of the participants wrote in the chat that she was doing a musical about Lowell’s mill girls, and would I want to chat further? You bet I did! The musical had already been written, but it was going through a series of rewrites in anticipation of a studio recording. Along with Professor Robert Forrant, I got to serve as a consultant to the project. I visited the Mass State Archives to see the 1845 petition that is at the heart of the musical and worked with the team of singers and songwriters to create public programming around the petition. https://millgirlsmusical.com/
You’re a scholar of gender and women’s history. What are some gender or women’s history works that have informed your thinking? Who are some scholars that have inspired you?
During my time as a UConn graduate student, I did not want to have to commute to campus too many days each week. I’d like to say that this was strictly for environmental reasons, but it was a logistical concern–I lived over an hour away. So, I asked to grade upper level courses and to run a lecture series on women’s and gender history. This was one of the best requests I’ve been granted in my life. I loved coordinating this series and I met so many generous scholars in the process, including Linda Kerber. I credit her work with inspiring a lot of my research in graduate school. Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz’s scholarship shaped a lot of my early thinking for my dissertation, and Tender Violence by Laura Wexler is still high on my list of the most important books I’ve ever read. I once saw Martha S. Jones take public feedback on a work-in-progress at a conference. I remain floored by her bravery, honesty, and sharp analytical approach to History. I also think Carol Anderson’s recent books on citizenship should be on any syllabi with a remote connection to United States history.
Knowing what I do now, I am also in awe of my advisor, Dr. Micki McElya. The time and care she took with my dissertation is something I will always appreciate. She supported my career path and my decisions from day one and kept me moving and progressing as a student. McElya made opportunities happen for me and built an amazing career along the way. I don’t know what else you can ask for in an advisor.
I wanted to see “The Rebel Girl” where she rests in Illinois.
What don’t people know or appreciate about working in a national park? What has surprised you about working in a national park?
Many of the people you will interact with on public lands do not have job security. Put another way, lots of people working at national parks do not have full-time or permanent jobs with the NPS. As with the adjuncting system at American colleges, many parks rely very heavily on positions that are filled on a seasonal basis.
Despite increases in visitation numbers, most parks remain understaffed. I think this labor dynamic is really important to talk about. There is an old saying that people who work in parks “get paid in sunrise and sunsets.” That’s an elegant way of evading important discussions about who is being compensated fairly. I am extremely fortunate to have the job that I occupy. To say it is a privilege is not the full story; I am also privileged and that is part of how I came to be in this job. Not acknowledging this would mean being somewhat dishonest about the way government hiring functions and what prospects are out there for future workers.
A screenshot of just one of many virtual programs that took place between 2020 and the present. Here is Allison talking with fellow Park Ranger, Denise DeLucia.
How well did your particular history training prepare you for your work at NPS?
My training as a historian has definitely helped. Since I work at a historical park, I conduct research and use my background knowledge for content development. There are some graduate seminars that have proved very useful in the long run. A lot of that training ultimately served as building blocks for my intellectual development in a rather vague way. I am not saying it was not helpful, but there is not an easy 1:1 relationship between graduate training and what I do in the workplace.
I was a graduate student between 2009 and 2016. During that time, I learned a lot just by being in a department where people had different jobs. I learned how to grade, teach, and run lectures, but I also learned how to coordinate events, reach out to busy people, write a decent email, and much more. I use bits and pieces of the skill sets needed to do all of those things when I lead programs, coach other employees, offer training, run internships, host meetings, etc.
That said, a lot of what I do at work has come from training outside of my academic life. I’ve also had jobs in hospitality, food services, and admissions. All of that is just as helpful in navigating my day-to-day job.
How has the pandemic affected you?
Both my brain and my heart are different as a result of the pandemic. When I conduct public programs for my job, I care a lot about the visitors I interact with and I want to create a welcoming, informative, and thought-provoking environment. I have worked with the public, masked and face-to-face, for almost all of the pandemic. I have also conducted quite a few public programs on the internet, and continue to connect with people on other virtual platforms. There is a certain kind of fog that comes with spending endless hours attached to Microsoft Teams meetings and phone calls. There is another fog that comes from speaking all day, enunciating ever-so-clearly-and-loudly-and-with-a-thick-mask to groups of people. We are juggling elements of both worlds, and let’s be honest, it’s exhausting. I know colleagues in the field are striving to remain hospitable, merciful, and kind. Some of the people walking through our doors have suffered trauma; many people leading tours and programs have, too. I know what buoys all of us is working for those moments wherein constructive discussion still feels possible, even when they seem out of reach.
I gave a paper in March 2021 about the way the pandemic was shaping the field of public history. We were about a year into the pandemic and my talk was part of a panel for a local, online conference. The other folks who spoke before me were generally upbeat, and constructive. They talked about adaptations in programming and ways that the pandemic had compelled them to shift their ways of thinking and planning, mostly for the better. By contrast, I had shared a lot more doom and gloom. When I wrote my talk, I was genuinely worried about how deeply the field of public history seemed to have failed in critical moments of national crisis. When I finished talking, I felt like my words were delivered with a big thud. It wasn’t as if the audience was unkind, or inattentive. Truthfully, it just felt as if it was too soon to talk about how hard some of this has been. I was feeling the loss of amazing people in the field so acutely, and while I don’t regret giving the paper, I hope to return to this conversation again when we can think about this period of crisis with a different kind of distance and perspective.
Notably, I also changed jobs during this pandemic, leaving one park for another. It was really hard to leave my colleagues and to make a change. I left and sent an email about how work changes us, and how this is something we think about not just in our personal lives, but in the interpretation we do together as well. I am not the type to leave with a ticker tape parade, or with a celebratory drink. Just how much we have all been changed by this – and the newer awareness many of us have about Americans’ deathly obsession with work under late stage capitalism – remains to be seen.
Working at a national park during a pandemic.
What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about what historians do and how they work?
I think there is a misconception about specialization and pools of knowledge. I imagine that many people believe, on the one hand, that we historians know a lot about random things (trivia) and on the other hand, far too much about one arcane subject. But in my experience, most historians do not strive to be overly specialized. This is also a luxury that few could afford to maintain. Historians who teach in classrooms are almost always called upon to teach a variety of topics. Other types of historians usually work in jobs that require them to be quite flexible.
Within my own career, I didn’t start as a historian of industrial history. Yet I talk to folks on a daily basis about historic machines and changes in technology. I feel qualified to do this because I have taken the necessary steps to learn this history, and I have the backing of my training as a historian of the United States. I do also find ways to pull in elements of specialized knowledge, including changes in concepts of work, womanhood, and labor. All of these topics are perfectly in line with what I spent years studying. If I went to work on a battlefield, I’d find other ways to use my background knowledge, too. Thankfully, there would also be talented and sharp people to train me and expand my worldview even further. I think that’s what most historians who work in my type of job actually do, and no, we are not relegated to niche subfields.
If money, time, and distance were not issues, what’s a dream project you’d love to tackle? Or what’s a class you have always wanted to teach, but just haven’t had the opportunity to?
In the future, I would like to teach public history while still working in the field. During my time as a guide and interpreter, I have been on the receiving end of quite a few assignments (given to college students) that felt a bit like a “gotcha.” Students will come to a museum or historic site with a checklist, worksheet, or other exercise and essentially drill someone at work without a lot of preparation. I don’t think this signals a high level of respect for different kinds of practitioners, and what is it teaching the students? We may be better off with more people living between the two worlds of formal education and informal education, rather than assuming that knowledge generation can only go one way. Most of all, it’s important that students of history develop a deeper understanding of different kinds of expertise in the field of history.
In terms of an ideal side quest, I’d also love to do a long-term, serious project on Temperance and Prohibition. I have been really surprised by the lack of critical inquiry into the centennial of the 18th Amendment. Prohibition is often written off as a somewhat random, or curious moment in history or it’s treated as some kind of grand joke. I think it’s a hugely important window into the expansion of federal power and has a lot to teach us as we continue to live in the midst of an opioid crisis.
Overall, when I think of removing the constraints of time and money, some small part of me gets a bit nervous. A lot of my dream projects include a frightening level of accumulation. As I get more and more into a topic, I increasingly want to collect objects and ephemera related to it. This can range from the quirky (I’m into patent medicine bottles this year!) to the slightly more eccentric (wait, now I’m all about hair art!) to the cumbersome (I bought a spinning wheel the other weekend off of Facebook marketplace). With endless resources, I’d probably need to create my own warehouse rather quickly. There are many things we are in need of in the United States. I am not sure that a museum of my findings is one of them.
If you weren’t a scholar, what kind of work do you think you’d be doing?
I like this question because I am not sure that I think of myself as a scholar. I earned a Ph.D., but I am not convinced that alone makes someone a scholar. While I love to study and I do think of myself as a specialist in some areas, my primary way of seeing the world is based on the practice of interpretation. I am proud to be an interpreter, and doing that work fits best with how my brain seems to function. It is also the work that gives me the most fulfillment.
What follows next may be an unpopular opinion. A word I actually really appreciate — but probably would not use in casual conversation when describing myself — is amateur. I love that love is at the heart of being an amateur. As a historian, I feel lucky that I can explore topics that call to me and ignite my personal interest. I also do my best to use the tangible skills I’ve honed in service of meaningful projects. What keeps me going, though, are the unexpected connections I make with other people through this kind of work. Here’s one example. I was collaborating with a colleague on a Night Sky program when I first thought about the meaning of the word amateur. She was bringing scientific expertise, and I was bringing the historical background. Doing a Night Sky program in a dense northeastern city, from a landing with a large, well-lit, blinking multi-colored bridge nearby is hard, but not impossible. While researching the Lowell Observatory, I kept coming across the word amateur in longer histories of astronomy. The first people who tried to chart out the sky and to master the universe through astronomy were amateurs by definition. But our world would be so different without amateurs who tried, and occasionally failed, to live a life of deeper understanding. For me, being a historian or being a scholar means standing in awe of the human pursuit, and love of learning. It also means staring up at an inky sky and daring to try and know something about the people who walked the earth tens of thousands of years before.
Allison at the launch of the Lowell Quarter – an event hosted with the United States Mint – in pre-COVID times.
- The American Studies program at Trinity College was interdisciplinary. During my time there, American was used as shorthand for the United States, not North America. What attracted me to the program was the opportunity to learn from faculty in English and other disciplines. I also liked that American Studies professors encouraged students to draw from a wider net of methodologies and source material. One of my first assignments involved flipping through copies of Life magazine housed in the library. I had to find something that spoke to me and write an essay on it. I was just hooked.
- There are a lot of places in my dissertation where I focus on a specific building. The entire project was also concentrated on Kittrell. In my introduction, I write: “Starting with the assumption that much can be learned from a single building—and a single life—tools from microhistorical and biographical approaches and feminist biography help to put Kittrell’s life and legacy in broader context. Using Kittrell’s story as a lens and guidepost, it is possible to see both the ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ histories of Home Economics in the twentieth century, to use Linda Gordon’s formulation from Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits (2009).” You can read more about microhistory in these sources: Richard D. Brown, “Microhistory and the Post-Modern Challenge,” Journal of the Early Republic 23 (Spring 2003): 1-20; Jill Lepore, “Historians Who Love Too Much: Reflections on Microhistory and Biography,” Journal of American History 88 (Spring 2001): 129-144; David Nasaw, “AHR Roundtable: Historians and Biography Introduction,” American Historical Review (June 2009): 573-578. Models used for this project include: Alice Kessler-Harris, A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman (New York: Bloomsbury, 2012); Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785- 1812 (New York: Knopf, 1990).