I completed my PhD in history at the University of Texas at Austin, and am a Lecturer in Modern American history at Cardiff University. I grew up in Manhattan, and earned my BA at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY. I decided to go straight from undergrad to grad school because I’m a huge nerd. So, I moved to Austin and entered the PhD program there in 2007. From 2010 to 2013 I was on the road, doing dissertation research, and then on one-year predoctoral fellowships at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies (in Philadelphia) and at International Security Studies at Yale (in New Haven). From 2013 to 2017 I worked as a Lecturer at the University of Southampton. I live in Bristol.

My book, No Useless Mouth: Waging War and Fighting Hunger in the American Revolution, will be published in November 2019 by Cornell University Press. It asks how Native American and formerly enslaved communities used food to wage war and broker peace during and after the American Revolution. It argues that people were not useless mouths; they portrayed hunger strategically, and took steps to avoid it. I have also written about cannibalism and Anglo-Indian foodways in colonial Virginia, initially for my MA, and then for my first article, which appeared in the January 2011 issue of the William and Mary Quarterly. My second article, on taste, eating, and work in Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative, was published in Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas. You can read my article on black Loyalist food laws for Slavery & Abolition here, and my article about Iroquoian food diplomacy in the American Revolution (for Diplomatic History) here.

In my spare time I enjoy baking, cooking, drinking red wine, and deploying large doses of sarcasm. I’m happy to talk to anyone about applying to grad school, researching or writing about food, and early America in general.

Curriculum Vitae

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