Positions
Education
Teaching Areas
Undergraduate Programs
- History
Graduate Studies
- History, MA
Graduate Supervision
Accepting Students for Supervision
School year
- 2026/27
- 2027/28
Guidelines or Expectations for Prospective Students
I welcome proposals from prospective students interested in studying American history at the graduate level. My preference is for projects that explore topics within the colonial era through to the early national period. Prospective students should look at the courses I offer and my publications when considering their proposal.
Supervised Theses / Projects
- 2024 Sydney Ventress, “‘Young Ladies Don’t Do Things Like That’”: Voices and Stories From the Women of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee” (MRP, primary supervisor).
- 2020 Rebecca Dubeau, “Rioting and Reporting: Representations of Race in the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Defender During the 1919 Chicago Race Riot” (MRP, primary supervisor).
- 2019 An Nguyen, “If There’s Still Việt Cộng, Then I Will Never Return:” Understanding the Vietnamese Diaspora Through Memories of Food, Work, and Nation” (MRP, primary supervisor).
- 2017 Rachel Loewen, “‘No Officer . . . Will Forget That the Soldier is Like Himself a Man:’
- American Citizen-Soldiers in a Democratizing Nation, 1812-1815” (MRP, primary supervisor).
- 2016 Lauren Edwards, “A Union Through Chains: Slavery and Meanings of the United States Constitution” (MRP, primary supervisor).
- 2016 Lesley, Kimewon, “Kina Dnwendagnag Miigsaabiigan Miinwaa Niizhswasebboon Gii
- Miigaading=Wampum belts: All my Relations and the Seven Years' War” (MRP, primary supervisor).
- 2014 Peter Brath, “‘A Luxurious, Lazy, Idle, and Effeminate People:’ Manhood, Property, and
- Race in Trustee Georgia, 1731-1752” (MRP, primary supervisor).
Current Courses
HIST 1037: Introduction to American History
HIST 1266: Sex, Violence, and Power in Early America
HIST 2046: Slavery and the American Civil War
HIST 2517: Race and Racism in America
HIST 3387: Teaching Hard History
HIST 3527: American Music
HIST 3577: The American Revolution and Early Republic, 1763-1825
HIST 4335: Seminar in American History
Research
Research Interests
- Revolutionary America
- Pennsylvania before 1800
- The Second Amendment
- Masculinity and the Militia
- Race and slavery
- Gender and sexuality
Current Research Projects / Labs
- Arms and the Men: Masculinity and the Militia in the Early Republic (manuscript in progress)
- Assistant Editor, The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson (https://www.jdproject.org/)
Open to Media Inquiries
Publications
Books Authored
Benjamin Franklin: American Founder, Atlantic Citizen. Routledge, 2015.
Books Edited
The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson, Volume 5, 1770-1774. Assistant Editor. University of Delaware Press, 2026.
The Second Amendment on Trial: Critical Essays on District of Columbia v. Heller. Co-edited with Saul Cornell. University of Massachusetts Press, 2013.
Articles in Refereed Journals and Refereed Book Chapters
“Rethinking Originalism: Bearing Arms and Armed Resistance in Pennsylvania.” American Journal of Legal History 56 (2016): 398-411.
“‘Falling Under the Domination Totally of Presbyterians’: The Paxton Riots and the Coming of the Revolution in Pennsylvania.” In Pennsylvania’s Revolution, edited by William Pencak, 7-35. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010.
“Originalism in a Digital Age.” Journal of the Early Republic 29, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 585-606.
“Pennsylvania, the Militia, and the Second Amendment.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 133 (2009): 119-147.
“Originalism, History, and the Second Amendment: What Did Bearing Arms Really Mean to the Founders?” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 10 (2008): 413-446.
“Defending Themselves: The Original Understanding of the Right to Bear Arms.” Rutgers Law Journal 39 (2008): 1041-1070.
Legal Briefs
“Brief of Historians on Early American Legal, Constitutional, and Pennsylvania History as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondent City of Chicago.” McDonald v. City of Chicago (No. 08-1521), 2010.