Explore a selection of Kathleen B. Casey’s writing across academic, cultural, and public platforms. Her work bridges scholarship and storytelling to explore American culture.

Books

• The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse in America (Oxford University Press, 2025)
  A deep dive into the purse as a symbol of identity, power, and protest.
• The Prettiest Girl on Stage is a Man: Race and Gender Benders in American Vaudeville (University of Tennessee Press, 2015) A collection of intriguing case studies of four highly successful vaudeville performers who engaged in gender, racial and ethnic impersonation.

Contributed Chapters

“This Sack So Full: Enslaved Women’s Use of Sacks in Antebellum America,” Chapter 3 in The Cultural Construction of Hidden Spaces: Essays on Pockets, Pouches and Secret Drawers (Brill 2024)

“What We Mean When We Talk About Drag,” Jewish Historical Studies: A Journal of English-Speaking Jewry, Tulane’s Grant Center for the American Jewish Experience (forthcoming 2006)

Academic Journals

“Pickets, Protests, and Purses in the American Civil Rights Movement,” Gender and History, Wiley-Blackwell, June 2022.

“Sex, Savagery and the Woman Who Made Vaudeville Famous,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, University of Nebraska Press, Vol. 36, No. 1, March 2015.

“‘The Jewish Girl with a Colored Voice’: Sophie Tucker and the Sounds of Gender and Race in Modern America,” Journal of American Culture, Wiley Periodicals, Vol. 38, No. 1, March 2015.

Popular Essays

“The Renaissance of Feminist Bookstores,” Ms. Magazine, January 2023

“Teaching the Deep Roots of Abortion in America,” Ms. Magazine, November 2022

Current Teaching

• WGS 101: Issues in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
• HIST 231: History of Women in America
• WGS 240: Modern Sexuality in America 
• HIST 285: Apparel in American History 

Awards & Nominations

• Book Development Grant, Furman Humanities Center, Furman University, 2024
• Recipient, Summer Faculty Development Grant, “Queer History and the Possibilities of Purses, ” Virginia Wesleyan University, 2022
• Nominee, Best Educator in Hampton Roads, Outwire757 Readers’ Poll, 2019
• Recipient, Mednick Memorial Fellowship, Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges, 2016-2017
• Semi-Finalist, Nancy Weiss Malkiel Junior Faculty Fellowship, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, 2016-2017
• Recipient, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, American Material Culture Summer Institute, Bard Graduate Center, Summer 2015.
• Recipient, Summer Faculty Development Grant, “The Prettiest Girl on Stage is a Man,” Virginia Wesleyan University, Summer 2014.
• Recipient, Innovative Teaching and Engaged Learning Grant, “Making Public History Matter,” Virginia Wesleyan University, 2014-2015.
• Offered, Postdoctoral Fellowship, Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, 2011-2012, Declined.
• Recipient of Susan B. Anthony Dissertation Award for the most distinguished dissertation in women’s and/or gender studies, 2010.
• Recipient of Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship, University of Rochester, 2009-2010.
• Finalist in the Woodrow Wilson Women’s Studies National Fellowship Competition, 2009.
• Writing Across the Disciplines Teaching Fellow, College Writing Program, 2005- 2009.
• Awarded two research grants from Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender Studies, 2006, 2008.

Scholarly Presentations

• “W/G/S/S Programs at Small Institutions: Growing & Strengthening Programs with Limited
• Resources,” Roundtable Discussant, National Women’s Studies Association, Detroit, Nov 2024
• “Caring for WGSS in the South: Perspectives from South Carolina,” Panel Discussant, WGSSouth, University of South Carolina, Upstate, Mar 2024
• “Managing the Modern Body: American Women’s Use of Purses, 1920-1940s,” Presenter, National
• Women’s Studies Association, Oct 2023
• “The Things She Carried: The Possibilities of Purses in Queer History,” Presenter, National Women’s
• Studies Association, Minneapolis, MN, Nov 2022
• “Fashioning New Histories of Clothing and Gender,” Organization of American Historians, April 16-19, 2026, Philadelphia
• “’I Have Got My Pocketbook By My Machine:’ Working Women, Place, Space, and Women’s Pocketbooks at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory,” American Historical Association, New Orleans, Jan 2022
• “Women’s Work, Clothing, and Contestations of Power in America and Africa,” Panel Organizer, American Historical Association, New Orleans, Jan 2022
• “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
• “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
• “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,” Invited Speaker, 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

Public Presentations

• Invited Speaker, “Racism in the Suffrage Movement,” Salon Talk Series, Eleanor’s Norfolk: Intersectional Feminist Bookstore, Norfolk, VA, Dec 2022
• Presenter and co-organizer, “A Brief History of Abortion,” Robert Nusbaum Center, AAUW, Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies Program, Virginia Wesleyan University, Sept 2022
• Invited presenter/consultant, “Exploring the Intersection of Gender and Race in Academia,” Equity in Academia Series, Children’s National Hospital, George Washington University, June 2022
• Invited Presenter, Women’s History and Equality Commemoration, Norfolk, VA Naval Base, August 2021
• Invited Presenter, “Race, Gender, and the Fight for Women’s Suffrage, 1890-1920,” Virginia Beach Historical Society, Virginia Beach, VA, March 2018
• Invited Presenter, “Apparel in American History,” Four-part series, Institute for Lifelong Learning, Westminster-Canterbury Retirement Community, Virginia Beach, VA, November 2017

Book Reviews 

• Review of David Monod, Vaudeville and the Making of Modern Entertainment, 1895-1925 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020) for Journal of American History, vol. 108, no. 4, March 2022, 851-852.
• Review of Clothing and Fashion in Southern History, edited by Ted Ownby and Becca Walton (University Press of Mississippi, 2020) for Journal of Southern History, vol. 87, no. 2., May 2021, 350-351.
• Review of Marina Dahlquist, Exporting Perilous Pauline: Pearl White and the Serial Film Craze (Alexander Street Press, 2013) for Women and Social Movements, vol. 18, no. 1, March 2014.