Editor’s note: This is the thirty-fourth 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.
Rebecca Brenner Graham (@theotherrbg.bsky.social) is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Brown University and the author of Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany. Here’s how she does history.
Author photo by Andrew Lehto Photography.
What is your current position?
I’m a three-year postdoc at Brown University, working on Brown 2026, which is a full set of university programs, events, and curricula marking the 250th anniversary of American independence. Brown 2026 engages the fullest histories of what renowned historian (and my supervisor) Karin Wulf calls “vast early America” and its contemporary legacies.
Before your current post, where were you working and for how long?
Previously, I worked as a history teacher at the Madeira School, an all-girls boarding and day college-prep school in Northern Virginia, as well as an adjunct professorial lecturer in the American University (AU) Department of History. I began teaching at Madeira in the middle of year five out of six of graduate school, and I stayed for four and a half years. For two years I adjuncted on the side: perks included full library access, research funds, parking, union membership, an excuse to see my AU community, and of course, rewarding teaching experiences.
I was a history teacher at the Madeira School in Northern Virginia the whole time I was writing my book. This and the remaining photos provided by Rebecca Brenner Graham.
Tell us about some of the courses you taught at American and Madeira.
At Madeira I taught 9th and 10th grade Comparative Global Studies, 11th grade U.S. History, and a few 12th grade electives, such as Philosophy and Holocaust Studies. By my final year I was teaching mostly 11th grade U.S. History, which I think was my best fit. At AU, I taught a survey course called “Social Forces That Changed America” four times. The course focused on gender, race, and class in modern U.S. history. While I edited the syllabus each time I taught it, Black Reconstruction by W. E. B. Du Bois and Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis remained its staples. Tangentially related, “social forces” is probably the most overused phrase in my book.
Your book, Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany (from Kensington Publishing) debuted last month. How did it happen and what was it like writing it?
When I defended my dissertation on postal history and nineteenth-century religion-state relations in August 2021, I intended to continue that project as an academic monograph.1 I even spoke with a university press. About a month later, I was wandering through a Barnes & Noble bookstore, where I stumbled across a book that was peripherally related to my undergraduate thesis topic on Frances Perkins’s refugee policy. Flipping through the index and footnotes it hit me that I still really cared about that topic, enough that I wanted to pursue it.
Some friends kindly explained to me how the trade press book process works, and someone I’d interned for years earlier helped connect me with a literary agency. I signed with my agent, Dani Segelbaum, in April 2022, revised my proposal and added chapters over the summer, and was on submission by the fall. I signed with Kensington in late fall 2022, and my manuscript was due on December 1, 2023.
In 2023, I wrote anywhere and everywhere. It consumed my life, and it brought me more joy and thrill than pretty much any previous life experience. I wrote during free blocks, chatted with colleagues about it, and thanks to the academic Internet I also had a wonderful writing group of scholars. I visited archives at Columbia, Mount Holyoke College, the National Archives at College Park, the downtown U.S. National Archives, and the FDR Presidential Library. I also received digitized archival materials from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. To illustrate writing anywhere and everywhere, I wrote significant chunks in the following states: Maine, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Ohio, Colorado, and California, as well as D.C.
My book was published on January 21, 2025, and I’m excited for readers finally to have access to it. In the original proposal, I listed my target audiences as women, Democrats, and Jewish communities. While writing, I often imagined my own students and my teacher colleagues reading it. Ultimately, I hope that as many readers as possible will feel engaged and interested by the stories in my book.
From left to right: me, Brandon Graham, Dani Segelbaum (my literary agent), and Scott Reibstein. Dinner in Washington, DC, January 2023.
From January through November 2023, I wrote most nights and weekends, and every school break was dedicated to research and writing. Spring break was an AU-funded research trip to Columbia and Mount Holyoke, and summer was research at the National Archives sites thanks to a Rubenstein Center Research Fellowship from the White House Historical Association and a Cokie Roberts Fellowship from the National Archives Foundation.
Some school days occasionally provided writing windows, like if my students were taking an in-class essay, their teacher was also writing. During evenings I’d grab food or drink at a D.C. or Virginia bar and aim for 500 words, or as Twitter/X calls it, #Team500. I also benefited from the site’s community of #5amwritingclub especially toward the end. In November 2023, I was waking up at 4:50 AM to arrive at my favorite Northern Virginia Starbucks right when it opened at 5:30 AM, then typing away listening to “Afraid of Heights” by boygenius on repeat until boarding school breakfast with my teacher colleague friends at 7:30am. Also in fall 2023, Saturdays were pivotal writing days where I aimed for 1000+ words because I need to prep on Sundays for adjuncting AU on Monday evenings.
I finished my manuscript on Thanksgiving Day 2023 at my aunt and uncle’s house on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I completed copy edits in May 2024, and I reviewed proofs in August 2024. While preparing various book publicity endeavors, I still catch a typo here and there, a common experience when publishing a book. I send them to Kensington to update for the next printing. Until then, I’m excited for the first print run.
The cover of Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany.
Tell us about promoting the book. Where will it take you in 2025?
As of writing this response, I have twenty-four book events scheduled, and am looking forward to planning more.2 Bookstores include Politics & Prose, Lost City, People’s Book, Barrington Books, Symposium, and Odyssey. Jewish communities include the Women’s Cultural Alliance at the Jewish Federation of Greater Naples and my hometown Temple Habonim in Barrington, RI. I’m looking forward to speaking at the National Archives, as well as the F. D. R. Presidential Library. I’m also excited for various essays, excerpts, and reviews, including Contingent Magazine.3 I’ve already noticed that the most meaningful publication-related experiences are the relationships built, connections strengthened, and places explored along the way.
What was the biggest surprise (or surprises) you found while writing the book?
The most successful immigration cases that Perkins was able to help were still deeply sad because these refugees had to leave everything they knew and loved. Her most robust, successful program was a collaboration between the Labor Department’s Children’s Bureau and the German-Jewish Children’s Aid, which facilitated the immigration of nearly a thousand German-Jewish children between 1934 and 1941. Most of these children never saw their parents again. Even the successful moments were tragic in the face of these circumstances. Everybody involved must have been emotionally exhausted most of the time.
Another surprise was that if Perkins clashed with someone in the U.S. State Department or Congress, she likely had to work with them on something else just months later. The federal government is, after all, a workplace.
Frances Perkins Place street sign in Hell’s Kitchen, March 2023.
What advice do you have for people interested in writing a book for a press that is not a university one?
I typically recommend two books, which I read in the early stages: Thinking Like Your Editor by Susan Rabiner and Alfred Fortunato and Before and After the Book Deal by Courtney Maum. The latter is one of my favorite books of all time and includes section titles like “My book’s sales are sluggish. Should I crawl under a rock and die?”
I’m passionate about the trade press process and view it as an important avenue for reaching broader audiences. If you’re a PhD doing women’s history and/or Jewish history and we know each other, please feel free to reach out to me about the possibility of connecting with my agent. If we’ve met at a conference and/or are social media mutuals, please also feel free to message me to schedule a Zoom coffee if I can answer your specific questions.
For writers like me with little to no extra money, I also want them to know that trade press comes with an advance. Mine was half of my teacher’s salary at the time. A trade press also typically comes with a publicist for people like me who can’t afford to pay one independently.
After all your research on Frances Perkins, what else do you wish you knew about her or is still out there for you to find?
Oh, so much. She was the opposite of candid, so a lot will never be known. The topic within my book that I’d most like to research further is the King-Havenner Bill, a 1940 plan to open a separate immigration quota to settle German-Jewish refugees in the American colonized territory of Alaska. I researched Perkins’ involvement as thoroughly as possible, and I’m interested in further exploring the opening-credits characters like the Interior Department’s Felix Cohen in this saga.
Researching the Frances Perkins papers at Columbia University, March 2023.
Have you always been interested in history?
Yes, very much so. Anyone who met me as a child would tell you that. Hannah Arendt expressed, “For me the question was somehow: I can either study philosophy or I can drown myself, so to speak.” I’ve always felt the same way about history. I used to struggle with the question “how did you become interested in history” because it feels essential to my being. Ultimately, it’s an important vehicle to try to understand the world.
Frances Perk Cafe, Williston Memorial Library, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA.
Tell us about your undergraduate and graduate experiences. Where did you complete your undergraduate and graduate studies?
Mount Holyoke College was an incredible place to go to college because as a women’s college, without the more traditional social pressures of college, I spent most of my time studying, writing, and talking with friends about our classes. It was so much more, too, like canvassing for Elizabeth Warren across Massachusetts with huge Dunkin’ iced coffees. I double majored in History as well as Philosophy, and I was surrounded by an ambitious, supportive community. The senior honors thesis process, for which I researched Frances Perkins’s refugee policy, was rigorous and formative.
Mount Holyoke prepared me for American University, where I completed both my MA in Public History and PhD in History in six years. My favorite classes were Gautham Rao’s, “Historian’s Craft” and “Founding Fathers?” I also TA-ed for Gautham’s “American Encounters,” and most notably, his “The West Wing as History.” The West Wing class combined a history of the show, the show’s interpretation of history, and a broader American political history. Although coursework could be stressful, and dissertating could be isolating for a hopeless extrovert – and I always had to work on the side – my graduate school experience was as positive as they come.
Sheridan Glacier in Cordova, AK, October 2024.
Your dissertation was on Sunday mail delivery, obviously a different topic than Frances Perkins. Tell us more about it and did you intend to turn it into a book? Is that still a goal?
I loved my dissertation topic: American nineteenth-century religion-state relations through the lens of Sunday mail delivery from 1810 to 1912, with emphasis on disenfranchised and religious minority perspectives. I’m still a postal history nerd. Recently, I was in Alaska for a talk and entranced by a snowy local post office with a mountainous backdrop and an old-fashioned hotel mailbox. Neither Alaska nor mailbox material culture played a role in my research, but maybe someday? Although rewriting my dissertation in a book format sounds fun, I would not write for close to free. And I’ve heard that Sunday mail delivery does not have trade press appeal. As a contingent scholar now in three-year employment, without outside cushion, I’m aware that an academic monograph would require too much energy for the limited compensation.
Are you currently working on a research project or new book project?
I’m hoping that book two will be about the historical memory of the American Revolution through a female millennial lens. I’ve drafted a proposal and will turn my attention to draft chapter(s). Returning to my early Americanist and public history roots, as well as my millennial childhood, chapters will include American Girl dolls, Liberty’s Kids, and Hamilton. I’ll also teach a class on this topic at Brown University. The process of writing book one was life-affirming and thrilling to me, and I can’t wait to do it again.
Chapter ten, “The Trapp Family Singers,” draws from documents including Baron von Trapp’s calling card at the National Archives at College Park, MD.
You are a historian of early America. What are some resources (books or articles) that have informed your research? Who are the scholars (historians or non) that have inspired you and your work?
I’m motivated by Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History. He wrote:
Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which the present rulers step over those who are lying prostate. According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried along in the procession. They are also called cultural treasures, and a historical materialist views them with cautious detachment… A historical materialist therefore dissociates himself from it as far as possible. He regards it as his task to brush history against the grain.
Benjamin means that in history, oppressors trample the marginalized first by terrorizing and murdering them, and then by producing myths that perpetuate erasure and misunderstanding. This text was a part of my early American history comprehensive exam essays, and it was also written during the Holocaust era, as Benjamin was on the run from Nazis until his untimely 1940 death. The themes transcend chronology. Theses on the Philosophy of History is a warning and a cry from a Jewish and extraordinarily thoughtful writer who was a victim of one of history’s most oppressive regimes. I first encountered the text in Gautham Rao’s Historian’s Craft class, and currently one of my supervisors Kevin McLaughlin is a scholar of Walter Benjamin’s life and writing. For me, that was a sign to take the job.
I completed my manuscript on Thanksgiving Day at my aunt and uncle’s house on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, November 2023.
You received your MA in Public History. Tell us about some of the public history you have participated in or undertaken?
Two of the most exciting public history projects I worked on during my graduate school era were curating an exhibit Breaking News: Alexander Hamilton for the George Washington University Museum and advising an oral history project Women’s Voices: An Oral History of DC Women for the Woman’s National Democratic Club Educational Foundation. I also contributed four oral history interviews to the September 11 Digital Archive at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. I’ve been a regular at the National Council for Public History, including a 2023 working group on American Girl dolls and public history. Most recently, my public history background informs my outreach efforts and conceptualizing Brown 2026.
You have written a lot for the public. How did you get started writing for different audiences and what advice do you have for people who want to write for larger audiences?
My entrance into public writing happened at the height of academic blogging in the mid-to-late 2010s, so it’s honestly hard to provide advice when people ask. My first substantial public writing experience was part of an internship for the Black Perspectives blog in summer 2017, when Ibram Kendi and Keisha Blain were running it. I was fortunate to do graduate school during the height of academic blogging. I also wrote for the U.S. Intellectual History (USIH) blog monthly for several years. That was an invaluable experience that I deeply appreciate, though now I rarely write for free or without an editor. Though it doesn’t pay, I’ve written for Made by History seven going on eight times, six times in The Washington Post and twice in Time Magazine. Brian Rosenwald’s editing is the experience of a lifetime, and I tell him this every time. The first several times I pitched Made by History, it was because something happened in the news that several people texted me about because it connected to my research, whether that was Frances Perkins or Sunday mail.
Most writers receive rejection exponentially more often than acceptance. The best pitching advice I’ve heard is to be fearless in the face of rejection. For example, The New Republic has rejected my book review pitches at least nine times in my “Rejection” emails folder. I’m proud of that, and it’s still a dream for me. While reviewing philosophy books for the Los Angeles Review of Books and Slate were two of my favorite professional experiences ever, I received more rejections than acceptances from both sites. Some of my favorite essays I’ve published online were for Perspectives on History, Nursing Clio, and of course, Contingent Magazine.4 Few endeavors are more thrilling to me than the 1000-word sprint, and if you feel the same way, keep pitching.
I received my PhD in history from American University in Washington, D.C., December 2021.
What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about what historians do and how they work?
As both a PhD historian and MA public historian, I’ve felt tension between people with each of those degrees, especially on the non-tenure-track job market. I want PhD historians to know that public history is its own field that they should probably learn about before entering, and it’s not a backup, and I want MA public historians to know that sometimes people without public history degrees can still do public history as well as anyone else. Ultimately, I want my colleagues in the profession to believe and act like we are all in this together – no need for artificial divisions – because frankly, many people outside the profession are targeting and terrorizing history professionals, all of us.
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?
If money, time, and distance (all issues) were non-issues, I’d rewrite my dissertation on Sunday mail delivery for whoever/wherever would publish it. I’d do that on the Amalfi Coast, where I’ve never been but has been my computer background since I read One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle in 2022.
If you weren’t a scholar, what other kind of work do you think you’d be doing?
If I weren’t obsessed with scholarship and writing, I’d be a teacher. I loved being a teacher. I loved my students and loved my teacher colleagues. I associate them with the song “Gold” by Ellie Holcombe: “you are gold to me, and I love the way you shine.”
Sitting in Frances Perkins’s favorite chair at her home in Maine, July 2023.
- For more on Rebecca’s dissertation topic, please see the 2019 Contingent Magazine postcard she wrote https://contingentmagazine.org/2019/10/07/a-postcard-from-washington-d-c/
- Visit Rebecca’s website often to see if she will be coming to your town or city to promote Dear Miss Perkins. https://rebeccabrennergraham.com/speaking
- Besides this profile, a review of Dear Miss Perkins, by Adina M. Yoffie is currently available. A mini-essay by Rebecca will be available in spring as a bonus piece for Contingent donors. Become a donor to read it.
- To read more of Rebecca’s work on Frances Perkins, please consult her 2019 Contingent Magazine feature, “No Refuge.” https://contingentmagazine.org/2019/08/23/no-refuge/