Presentations

● “Sacks, Bags, and Purses: Enslaved’ Women’s Pursuit of Freedom and Privacy in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” Presenter, Institute of Modern Languages Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London, Dec 2021

● “Promising Pedagogies,” Panel Chair, American Studies Association annual conference, Baltimore, MD, November 2020 (cancelled due to Covid-19)

● “The Power of the Purse: Resistance and Repression in Mid-Twentieth Century America,” Panel Organizer, “Gendered Objects: Identity, Agency, and Activism through Material Culture. ”Berkshires Conference on Women, Genders, and Sexualities, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, May 2020 (cancelled due to Covid-19)

● “Purses and the Politics of Resistance,” American Studies Association, Honolulu, Nov 2019

● “The Performative Role of the Purse in American Visual Culture, 1890-1920,” The Berkshire Conference on Women, Genders, and Sexualities, Hofstra University, June 2017

● “Race, Gender, and the Fight for Women’s Suffrage, 1890-1920,” Invited Speaker, Virginia Beach Historical Society, Virginia Beach, VA, March 2018

● “The Things She Carried,” National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Institute, Bard Graduate Center, July 2015

● “Women and the Power of the Purse,” Works in Progress, Regional Interdisciplinary Conference of Feminist Scholarship, Virginia Wesleyan College, March 2015

● “The Promises and Perils of Teaching the History of Fun,” American Historical Association, New York City, January 2015

● “Performing the Primitive in a Nerve-Wracked World,” Western Association of Women’s Historians Conference, Polytechnic University, Pomona, California, May 2014

● “The Prettiest Woman on the Stage is a Man,” Popular Culture Association/American Cultural Association, Washington D.C., March 2013

● “Sex, Savagery and the Woman Who Made Vaudeville Famous”, Women, Professions, and Politics: A Historical Symposium in Memory of Lynn D. Gordon, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, October 2012.

● “‘She is What She Aint:’ Lillyn Brown and the Meaning of Black Male Impersonation,” The Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, June 2011.

● “‘She is What She Aint:’ Lillyn Brown and the Meaning of Black Male Impersonation,” Keynote Speaker, Susan B. Anthony Institute Undergraduate Research Conference, April 2011.

● “‘Making a Woman of Himself:’ Julian Eltinge and the Art of Female Impersonation,” InvitedSpeaker, Humanities and Social Sciences Lecture Series, Schenectady Community College, March 2011.

● “‘I Don’t Care:’ The Gender and Racial Transgressions of the Irreverent Eva Tanguay,” The Futures of American Studies Institute, Dartmouth College, June 2009.

● “Cross Dressers and Race Crossers: Blackness and Gender on the American Popular Stage,” The Susan B. Anthony Institute’s Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference, University of Rochester, March 2007.