Biography
I am a historian of early American society and culture who focuses on the Mississippi River Valley. My research examines the interplay of global and local dynamics in the North American continental interior with the goal of reshaping our narratives of the cultural and religious development of the United States. I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. I completed my PhD in American History at the University of Delaware in 2016.
Research
The New Orleans Center for the Gulf South provided research support for my dissertation, which is now a book project. Tentatively titled Holy Waters: Religious Encounters in the Mississippi River Valley, the project is historical study of the christianitzation of the region between 1780 and 1830. Although excellent scholarship has explored how the Second Great Awakening spurred a spectacular expansion of Protestantism in the early American republic, the historiography has marginalized other forces in the religious life of the Mississippi River Valley. By 1803, when the United States gained jurisdiction over territory west of the Mississippi River through the Louisiana Purchase, Catholics had been populating the area and proselytizing enslaved Africans and neighboring Native Americans for a century. In the early 1800s, just as Catholics undertook an expansion of their institutional presence in the region, American Protestants targeted the area as a mission field. My work argues that inhabitants—African Americans, Native Americans, and Euro-Americans—welcomed the new educational, social, and spiritual benefits that Catholic and Protestant missionaries offered, but did so on their own terms. Holy Waters elucidates the inhabitants’ religious initiative in shaping Christian practices and institutions. By excavating the cultural encounters characteristic of everyday life, highlighting Catholic and Native American religious vitality, and exposing the intense contest for religious preeminence in the region, my work challenges the narrative of Protestant evangelical victory and expands the story of North American religious history.
