GLORIA McCAHON WHITING Department of History Harvard University 35 Quincy Street Cambridge, MA 02138 1011 Gilmore Avenue Nashville, TN 37204 413.575.6854 gwhiting@fas.harvard.edu EDUCATION Harvard University, Cambridge, MA Master of Arts in History, May 2010 Doctor of Philosophy in History expected May 2015 Research Interests: Early North American Social, Cultural, and Material History; Women s, Gender, and Family History; Race and Slavery in the Atlantic World. General Examination, passed with the highest distinction, in the following fields: Early American History, with Professor Jill Lepore Modern American History, with Professor Walter Johnson History of the Atlantic World, with Professor Vincent Brown Early African History, with Professor Charlotte Walker Rice University, Houston, TX Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with Honors in History, May 2006 Majors in History, English, and Policy Studies DISSERTATION African Families, American Stories: Black Kin and Community in Early New England. Advisor: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich Readers: Jill Lepore, Walter Johnson, and Annette Gordon-Reed FELLOWSHIPS, AWARDS, & HONORS Grant for Research Assistance, Center for American Political Studies, Harvard University, 2015 Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Charles Warren Center, 2014 2015 Graduate Society Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Harvard University, 2014 2015 (declined) Coordinating Council for Women in History Berkshire Fellowship Honorable Mention, 2014 Seed Grant for Innovative Graduate Research, Center for American Political Studies, 2014 Term-Time Graduate Research Grant, Charles Warren Center, 2013 (declined) New England Regional Consortium Fellowship Grant, 2012 2013 Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society, 2012 2013 Michael Kraus Research Grant in Colonial History, American Historical Association, 2012 1
Dissertation Research Fellowship, Charles Warren Center, 2012 (declined) Artemas Ward Fellowship for Dissertation Research, Harvard University, 2011 2014 Summer Travel Award, Harvard University History Department, 2011 Graduate Society Term-Time Merit Fellowship, Harvard University, 2011 (declined) Term-Time Graduate Research Grant, Charles Warren Center, 2011 (declined) Richard A. Berenson Graduate Fellowship, Harvard University, 2010 2013 Jacquelyn Dowd Hall Prize, Southern Association for Women Historians, 2009 Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Summer Fellowship, Harvard University, 2009 Barbara Field Kennedy Prize for Excellence in American History, Rice University, 2006 Phi Beta Kappa, Beta of Texas Chapter, Rice University, 2006 History Major of the Year, Rice University History Department, 2004 Essay Prize in Women s and Gender Studies, Rice University, 2004 Dolores W. Mitchell Scholarship in the Humanities, Rice University, 2004 INVITED LECTURES & CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS Gender, Family, and Freedom in Post-Revolutionary New England. To be delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, Raleigh, North Carolina, July 18, 2015. The Selling of Joseph: Slavery, Freedom, and Black Family Life in Samuel Sewall s Neighborhood at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century. To be delivered at the Joint Conference of the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture and the Society of Early Americanists, Chicago, Illinois, June 19, 2015. the Negroes have left : African Americans and the Politics of Emancipation in Revolutionary Massachusetts. To be delivered at the Conference on the Causes, Course, and Consequences of the American Revolution sponsored by Boston University, Williams College, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the David Library of the American Revolution, Boston, Massachusetts, April 9, 2015. The Body of Liberties and Bodies in Bondage: Dorcas the Blackmore, Dorchester s First Church, and the Legalization of Slavery in the Anglo-Atlantic World. To be delivered at the Boston Area Early American History Seminar at the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts, February 3, 2015. Power, Patriarchy, and Provision: African Men and Women Build Families in Early New England. Delivered at the American Studies Summer Institute of the University of Massachusetts, Boston, July 10, 2014. Claiming the Right of Being Born Free, Equal, and Independent : New England Slaves and the Work of Freedom in the Revolutionary Era. Delivered at the University of Michigan Graduate Student Conference on the History of Labor, Ann Arbor, Michigan, May 10, 2014. 2
How can the wife submit? African Families Negotiate Gender and Slavery in New England. Delivered at the Boston Seminar on the History of Women and Gender at the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts, April 15, 2014. She lives with her Husband somewhere in Town : Slavery, Freedom, and Family in Eighteenth- Century New England. Delivered at the Rhode Island Historical Society, Providence, Rhode Island, March 27, 2013. That You May Become Good Christians : Religion and Slave Family Life in Early Massachusetts. Delivered at the Boston College Biennial Conference on the History of Religion, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, March 30, 2012. Challenges in Studying Early Black Family Life. Delivered at the Graduate Student Forum in Early American History at the Colonial Society of Massachusetts in Boston, June 17, 2011. Slavery, Craft, and Identity in Eighteenth-Century Boston. Delivered at the annual symposium of the Material Culture Institute at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, May 21, 2011. Agents of the State: Black Women and Interracial Welfare Work in the District of Columbia, 1863-1915. Delivered at the triennial conference of the Southern Association for Women Historians, Columbia, South Carolina, June 6, 2009. PUBLICATIONS Review of Katherine Howlett Hayes, Slavery Before Race: Europeans, Africans, and Indians at Long Island s Sylvester Manor Plantation, 1651 1884 (New York: New York University Press, 2013) in the Journal of the Early Republic, Summer 2014: 285-287. Sojourners and Strangers in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic. Review of Cornelia H. Dayton and Sharon V. Salinger, Robert Love s Warnings: Searching for Strangers in Colonial Boston (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) in Common-place, Winter 2015. TEACHING & ADVISING Courses Taught English Law and Society, 1571 1788 (Professor David Smith) This research seminar explored English legal development from the sixteenth through the late eighteenth century, a period of fundamental change in which English law responded to the needs of an increasingly commercial and expansionist society. I aided the professor with course design and worked closely with undergraduates, teaching them research strategies, helping them master relevant historiography, and advising them in the completion of seminar-length scholarly papers. 3
American Families, 1600 1900 (Professor Laurel Ulrich) This course examined how family forms have varied in American history, considering the radical innovations of seventeenth-century Puritans, eighteenth-century Moravians, and nineteenth-century Mormons; the role of the family in debates over slavery, immigration, and the status of American Indians; and the impact of legal, economic, and social changes on mainstream ideals and practices. I helped craft the syllabus, taught two discussion sections, and created and graded assignments. Tangible Things: Harvard Collections in World History (Professors Laurel Ulrich and Ivan Gaskell) This lecture course investigated the history of Harvard and that of the world more broadly from the early seventeenth century to the present through intensive interaction with the astonishing array of tangible things that the university has collected during this time. I carried out original research on objects in Harvard s collections to build an archive of course materials, helped create assignments and construct the syllabus, taught two weekly sections, and graded student work. Prospective Future Courses (Selected) We the People : Ordinary Americans, the American Revolution, and the Newly United States This survey of the American Revolution chronicles social, cultural, political, economic, and military developments in British North America between 1763 and 1800. It situates the colonies struggle for independence in the context of changes in the broader Atlantic world, and it places front and center those who often get short shrift in this narrative women, slaves, Native Americans, and poor white men showing how they influenced history alongside better-known actors. African Families in the Atlantic Diaspora This seminar tracks the rich diversity of family formations developed by Africans in the Atlantic from so-called fictive kin relationships to polygamous units to nuclear family structures paying close attention to the influences of demography, culture, and religion on these family forms and tracing the ways in which Africans kin connections changed through time. North American Gender and Women s History to 1870 This survey investigates women s lives in mainland North America from the period preceding European contact to the era of the Civil War, examining the roles that women of all races and statuses played in colonial society and how those roles changed over time. Probing the ways in which the diverse peoples of early America defined manhood as well as womanhood, it explores the influence of ideas about gender on the creation and elaboration of hierarchies in the colonies. Introduction to the Atlantic World, 1500 1804 This survey examines the world created by Africans, Europeans, and American Natives from the sixteenth century, when European expansion into the Atlantic basin began in earnest, to the conclusion of the Haitian Revolution in 1804. Proceeding both chronologically and thematically, it explores the rise, proliferation, and demise of Atlantic slavery alongside major themes that animated Atlantic life, such as migration, trade, cultural exchange, faith, death, and rebellion. 4
Gender and Slavery in the Americas, 1600 1800 This seminar probes what it meant to be a woman or a man in the world created by Atlantic slavery. Exploring ports on West Africa s Slave Coast, mining towns in Brazil, sugarcane fields in the French Antilles, maroon communities in Jamaica, rice plantations in South Carolina, and farms in New England, it exposes students to the diverse ways in which gender shaped slaves lives and labors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. American History: European Settlement to the Early Republic This survey chronicles the history of early North America, examining the interactions between Africans, Americans, and Europeans (and their descendants) from the earliest European contact through the formation of the American Republic. It considers changes in the society, economy, politics, culture, religion, and gender norms of the colonies during this era. Academic Advising Non-Resident Tutor in Eliot House, 2010 2014 Served as primary academic advisor for History concentrators living in Eliot House, one of Harvard s twelve undergraduate residence halls. Approved plans of study and advised students on course offerings and concentration options. Mentored students considering graduate school. Helped initiate a successful departmental effort to reverse declining undergraduate enrollments. Honors Thesis Advisor & Reader, 2010 2012 Advised senior history major through the process of researching and writing an honors thesis titled Free Markets, Freed People: How Blacks used Business to promote Abolition during the Antebellum Era. Served as a reader for thesis writers working on topics as varied as Allied financing during World War I and the history of insanity defense in American law and politics. ADMINISTRATION Coordinator, Harvard University Early American History Working Group, 2010 2012 Applied for and acquired requisite funding; made and publicized schedules of faculty and graduate student presentations; arranged for outside scholars to share their works in progress; and coordinated faculty discussions on scholarly issues of interest to graduate students. PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS American Historical Association, 2011 present Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora, 2014 present Coordinating Council for Women in History, 2012 present Massachusetts Historical Society, 2011 present Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture, 2011 present Southern Association for Women Historians, 2009 present 5
LANGUAGES Spanish high proficiency (reading and writing) French proficiency (reading) REFERENCES Laurel Ulrich, 300th Anniversary University Professor Harvard University Department of History 35 Quincy Street Cambridge, MA 02138 ulrich@fas.harvard.edu 617.496.9548 Jill Lepore, David Woods Kemper 41 Professor of American History Harvard University Department of History 35 Quincy Street Cambridge, MA 02138 jill_lepore@harvard.edu 617.496.5083 Walter Johnson, Winthrop Professor of History and African American Studies Harvard University Department of History 1730 Cambridge Street Cambridge, MA 02138 johnson2@fas.harvard.edu 617.495.4527 6