Academic Appointment

2020-present, Associate Professor and Stuart and Joyce Robbins Chair, Department of History, West Virginia University

2014-2020, Assistant Professor, Arch Dalrymple III Department of History and Center for the Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippi

Education

Ph.D., History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2014. 

M.A., Women’s History, Sarah Lawrence College, 2006.

B.A., English, Carson-Newman College, 2003.

Selected Publications   

To Live Here, You Have To Fight: How Women Led Appalachian Movements for Social Justice, published in The Working Class in American History Series (University of Illinois Press, 2019). Winner of the H.L. Mitchell Award from the Southern Historical Association. Received Honorable Mention from the Philip Taft Prize in Labor and Working-Class History and was a finalist for the OAH Mary Nickliss Prize in U.S. Women’s and/or Gender History.

Book Chapters

“Oral History and Testimony in Histories of Women, Gender, and Sexuality,” in A Companion to American Women's History, second edition, eds. Nancy A. Hewitt and Anne M. Valk (Wiley Blackwell, 2020).

“Mill Mother ‘Just A’waiting for a Strike’: Ella May Wiggins” in North Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times, eds. Michele Gillespie and Sally McMillen (University of Georgia Press, 2015).

Articles

“Pointing a Way Forward,” Introduction for the the special issue, the “Women’s Issue,” Southern Cultures, 26, no. 3 Southern (fall 2020).

“Representing Working-Class Lives, Struggle, and Movements in Twenty-First Century Films,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 18, no. 1 (March 2021).

“Appalachian War on Poverty and the Working Class,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. Oxford University Press. Article published June 2020.

“The Company Owns the Mine But They Don’t Own Us: Feminist Critiques of Capitalism in the Appalachian South,” Gender & History 28, no. 1 (April 2016). Recipient of the A. Elizabeth Taylor Prize for the best article in women’s history, from the Southern Association for Women Historians.

“Mountain Feminist: Helen Matthews Lewis, Appalachian Studies, and the Long Women’s Movement,” from an interview by Jessica Wilkerson, compiled and introduced by Jessica Wilkerson and David P. Cline, in Southern Cultures 17, no. 3 (fall 2011).

Selected Fellowships and Honors

  • Named a Carnegie Fellow, 2021-2023

  • H.L. Mitchell Book Award, Southern Historical Association

  • Honorable Mention, Phillip Taft Prize in Labor and Working-Class History

  • College of Liberal Arts Mike L. Edwards New Scholar Award, University of Mississippi, 2020.

  • A. Elizabeth Taylor Prize for best article in southern women's history, Southern Association for Women Historians, 2017.

  • Visiting Scholar, American Academy of Arts & Sciences (One year research fellowship), 2016-2017. 

  • Lerner-Scott Prize for the best doctoral dissertation in women’s history, Organization of American Historians, 2015.

  • Herbert G. Gutman Prize for Outstanding Dissertation, Labor and Working-Class History Association, 2015.

  • American Fellowship, American Association of University Women, 2013-2014.

Teaching Experience

West Virginia University

  • History 459: New Deal to Great Society (UG/G)

  • History 445: History of American Women (UG/G)

  • History 763: Readings in United States History (G)

  • History 773: Readings in Appalachian Regional History (G)

University of Mississippi

  • History 336: Southern Women in History (UG)

  • History 332: The 20th Century South (UG)

  • History 399: U.S. Social Movements Since 1945 (UG)

  • Southern Studies 101/102: Introduction to Southern Studies (UG)

  • Southern Studies 402: Capstone Seminar for Majors (UG)

  • Southern Studies 560: Oral History and Southern Social Movements

  • Southern Studies 601: Introduction to Southern Studies (G)

  • History 613: Contemporary U.S. History (G)

  • History 641: Global Feminisms (G)

Invited Lectures

2019-2020, Book Talks for To Live Here, You Have to Fight

  • Frost Lecture, Willamette University (Salem, OR)

  • The Lexington Gathering (Lexington, KY)

  • Kentucky Book Festival (Lexington, KY)

  • Reuther-Pollack Labor History Symposium (Wheeling, WV)

  • West Virginia University (Morgantown, WV)

  • Highlander Research and Education Center (New Market, TN)

  • Taylor Books (Charleston, WV)

  • Halls Library, branch of Knox County Public Libraries (Knoxville, TN)

  • University of Kentucky (co-sponsored by the History and Women’s and Gender Studies Departments, and the Appalachian Center)

  • Working Group in Feminism and History, Carolina Seminars, Duke/UNC

  • Auburn University (co-sponsored by the History and Women’s and Gender Studies Departments)

  • East Tennessee History Center (co-sponsored by Union Avenue Books and the Knox County Friends of the Public Library)

2018-2019

  • “Reading Foxfire,” Fall Symposium, Southern Foodways Alliance, Oxford, Mississippi.

  • “Till the People are Fed: Appalachian Women, Food, and Protest,” Appalachian Food Summit, Bridgeport, West Virginia.

  • “Who Gets to Speak for Appalachia? Gender, History, and Memory,” women’s history month lecture, Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, LA.

2015- 2016

  • “A Movement of Caregivers in the Appalachian South,” Western Carolina University’s History Department and the Appalachian Women’s Museum, Cullowhee, NC.

  • “The Welfare Rights Movement in the Appalachian South,” Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY.