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Judith A. RidnerEarly and Frontier AmericaImmigration and Ethnicity Oral History 237 Allen Hall Mississippi State University Mailbox H Mississippi State, MS 39762 Phone: 662-325-3604 E-mail: jridner@history.msstate.edu Education
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I am an historian of early America, with additional research and teaching interests in the American frontier, ethnicity and immigration, and oral history. To date, my research has focused on the early Pennsylvania frontier and its colonists. My recent book, A Town In-Between: Carlisle Pennsylvania and the Early Mid-Atlantic Interior, published as part of the Early American Studies series at University of Pennsylvania Press (2010), reconsiders the role early American towns -and Scots-Irish colonists -played in the development of the early American West.
Two new projects, one focusing in on a collection of captivity narratives from the early republic and the other, a book-length study tracing how memories of violence carried over from seventeenth-century Ireland to eighteenth-century America, build upon my interests in the frontier and the Scots-Irish.
In addition to my work in early America, I have been involved in community-based local oral history project that is researching the stories of African-American life and culture in the northeastern Pennsylvania cities of Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton in the 20th century.
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Education:
PhD, History, College of William and Mary, 1994> M.A., History, College of William and Mary, 1988 B.A., History Dickinson College, 1986, Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude Academic Career Associate Professor (fall, 2011-present) - Department of History, Mississippi State University. Associate Professor (fall 1998-2011, tenured spring 2004) - Department of History, Muhlenberg College. Department Chair, History Department, Muhlenberg College (2009-2011). Director, Muhlenberg College's Center for Ethics (fall 2006-spring 2009). Program Director, Center for Ethics (spring 2004-fall 2005). Tenure- Track Assistant Professor (Fall 1994-1998) - Department of History, California State University, Northridge. Related Work Experience Archaeological Teaching Assistant (Summer 1992, Summer 1990) - Historical Archaeology Field School sponsored by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Jamestown Fellow (1988-89) -- The Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation. Archaeological Lab Technician (1989, 1987-1988), Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Archaeological Excavator/Research Assistant (Summer 1987) -- New Jersey State Museum at Morven, Princeton, NJ. Archaeology Intern (January-May 1987) -- James River Institute for Archaeology,. Archaeology Intern (1986) -- Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Presentations (With Susan Clemens-Bruder) "Crisis or Opportunity?: African-Americans Confront the Racial Politics of Urban Renewal in Allentown, PA," to be presented at the American Studies Association Annual Conference, San Antonio (forthcoming, Nov 2010). (With Susan Clemens-Bruder) "Divided But Not Defeated: Urban "Renewal," Race Politics, and the African-American Community of Allentown, PA," to be presented at Oral History Association, Atlanta (forthcoming, Oct 2010) [With Susan Clemens-Bruder] "Translating African-American Oral History into Theater: A Case Study from Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley," Oral History Association Conference, Louisville (October 2009]. "(Re)Assessing Loudon's Indian Narratives as Text on Race and Ethnic Identity on the Mid -Atlantic Frontier," ECI ASECS (American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies) Annual Meeting, Bethlehem (October 2009). [Poster Session with Linda McGuire] "Facilitating a Campus Conversation About the Ethics of Freedom," Lilly East Teaching Conference, University of Delaware (Spring 2009). "Fostering Intensive Campus Discussions of our Collective Values and Ethics," public talk for the Muhlenberg Parents' Council (spring 2009). "Ethnicity and Religion as Factors Shaping Colonial Pennsylvania's Contentious Politics: A Case Study of the Paxton Boys Controversy, 1764 ," Maple Leaf and Eagle American Studies Conference at the University of Helsinki, Finland (May 2008). (With Susan Clemens-Bruder) ''Voices of the Lehigh Valley'S Black African Heritage: Promised Land Life in Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton since 1920," City as Utopia Conference, Lehigh University (April 2008). (With Linda McGuire) "Facilitating a Sustained Campus Conversation about Individual and Collective Values" Institute on College Student Values Conference, Florida State University (January 2008). "What Does Being Irish Have to Do With It?: The Paxton Boys and Their Critics, 1764," Irish and the Atlantic World Conference, Charleston (February 2007). "How Memories of Violence Shaped Colonial America's Scots-Irish and Irish." Talk for the Haddonfield County Historical Society, Haddonfield, NJ (fall 2006). Roundtable Panel Discussant, "New Horizons in Early Pennsylvania History," Pennsylvania Historical Association Annual Conference (fall 2006). "What Can Captivity Narratives Tell Us about Virginia's History?" The Virginia Forum, Shenandoah University (April 2006). "Building Urban Spaces for the Interior: Thomas Penn and the Colonization of Eighteenth -Century Pennsylvania," Early American Cartographies Conference, Newberry Library (March 2006). "A Bloody and Murderous Past: Irish Protestant Memories of Violence in Ireland and America," Forum on European Expansion and Global Interaction Conference, Huntington Library (February 2006). "Tracing Economic Networks and the Personal Connections that Drive Them," presented at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's symposium, Stories and Sources: Exploring History Through Documents, Philadelphia (Fall 2004). "Remembering Cruel Actions by Barbarous Enemies in Ireland and America: The Scots-Irish Experience in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries," presented at the American Conference for Irish Studies Mid-Atlantic Meeting, Princeton University (Fall 2004). "The African-American Community in the Lehigh Valley." Noontime talk at the Lehigh County Historical Society, Allentown, PA (Fall 2005) "The Little Lehigh Urban Redevelopment Project and Allentown's African-American Community." Talk presented at the Lehigh County Historical Society, the Lehigh County Senior Center, and Muhlenberg College (Spring 2004). "Remembering Actions Most Cruel and Barbarous: Connecting Memories of Violence in 17th Century Ireland and 18th-Century America," presented at On the Move: Migration and the Reconstruction of Cultural Identity, West Virginia University (Spring 2003). "Relying on the 'Very Saucy' Men of the Backcountry: Middlemen and the Fur Trade in Pennsylvania," Pennsylvania Historical Association Annual Conference, University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown (Fall 2001). "Outrages Committed by Indians, Civilization Wrought by White People': A Backcountry Town Looks Back at its Eighteenth-Century History," Organization of American Historians Conference, Toronto (Spring 1999). '''To Carry Them Entirely Above Every Obstacle': William Irvine and the Complexities of Manhood and Fatherhood in the Pennsylvania Backcountry," Pennsylvania Historical Association Annual Conference, Muhlenberg College (October 1998). "Houses Well Calculated for Public or Private Purposes: Domestic Landscapes in Eighteenth -Century Pennsylvania," American Historical Association Conference, Seattle (January 1998). "Fashioning a Great Thoroughfare to the Interior: Planning the Middle Landscape of Eighteenth-Century Carlisle, Pennsylvania," The Seventh National Conference on American Planning History, Seattle (October 1997). "Fashioning a Middle Landscape in Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania: Indians, Colonists, and the Penn Family in the Backcountry," Southwestern Social Science Association Conference, New Orleans (Spring 1997). "The Westward Migration of Socio-Cultural Patterns in Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania," Southwestern Social Science Association Annual Conference, Houston (Spring 1996). "Scotch-Irish Rascals and Worthy Presbyterian Teachers: Education and Culture on the Pennsylvania Frontier," Duquesne History Forum, Pittsburgh (Fall 1997). "'I May Surely with Propriety Claim It': Property and Feminine Notions of Family Preservation in Backcountry Pennsylvania, 1780-1810," Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Conference, Cincinnati (Summer 1995). "'I Am, My Dear Love, Affectionately Yours': Husbands and Their Wives in the Pennsylvania Backcountry," Organization of American Historians Conference, Washington D.C. (Spring 1995). "Status, Culture, and the Structural World in the Valley of Pennsylvania," After the Backcountry Conference, Virginia Military Institute (Spring 1995). '''Almost All Trades are Carried on Here': Occupational Structure and Economic Behavior in Post-Revolutionary Carlisle, Pennsylvania," Institute for Early American History and Culture Colloquium, College of William and Mary (Fall 1993). A Duty to Home and Family: Women Petitioners in Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania," The Institute for Research on Women Annual Conference, Rutgers University (Spring 1993). "To Love Their Wives as Themselves?:' Male Visions of Love and Marriage in Eighteenth Century Carlisle," Philadelphia Center for Early American Studies Seminar (Spring 1993). Publications Books: A Town In-Between: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and the Early Mid-Atlantic Interior, Early American Studies Series, University Pennsylvania Press (May 2010). For the link, see: http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14745.html Professional Engagements Related to the Book: Talk and Book Signing - Cumberland County Historical Society, Carlisle, PA (forthcoming, Sept 2010) Taped hour-long Television Interview for PCN's (PA Cable Network) "PA Books" series (taped Aug 2010 - will air sometime in late 2010 or early 2011) "New Studies in PA History," McNeil Center Summer Seminar Series (July 2010) "Dickinson Alum Pens Carlisle History Book, " interview by Joseph Cress for The Carlisle Gazette newspaper (May 2010) Essay for Edited Volume -- "Building Urban Spaces for the Interior: Thomas Penn and the Colonization of Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania" to appear in Early American Cartographies, ed. Martin Brueckner (Chapel Hill: published for OIEAHC by UNC Press - revised copy submitted to press - volume citations are currently being checked - then volume will be copy edited). Encyclopedia Entry - "The Enlightenment on the Frontier" for the Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment (under contract and forthcoming by Continuum Books). Report on the Annual Meeting - Program Chair's report on Fall 2008 meeting of the Pennsylvania Historical Association in Bethlehem. Pennsylvania History (spring 2009). Peer Reviewed Article - "Relying on the 'Saucy' Men of the Backcountry: Middlemen and the Fur Trade in Pennsylvania" The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (April 2005): 133-162. Introduction to Exhibit Catalog - wrote introduction to exhibit catalog, Representing Disease: The Stephanie Images, published by the Martin Art Gallery, Muhlenberg College (Fall 2004). Peer Reviewed Article - "What an Addition to my Happiness has my Wife and Children been to Me'?: Three Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania Husbands 'Talk' to and about Their Wives," Pennsylvania History (Fall 2003): 305-330. Book Chapter - "The Revolution Produced No Significant Benefits for Women," in History in Dispute, Volume 12: The American Revolution, ed. Keith Krawczynski (Farmington Hills, MI: St. James Press, 2003). Peer Reviewed Article -- "William Irvine and the Complexities of Manhood and Fatherhood in the Pennsylvania Backcountry," appeared as the lead article in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (JanuaryjApril2001): 5-34. Book Chapter in Edited Volume -- "Status, Culture, and the Structural World in the Valley of Pennsylvania" in After the Backcountry: Rural Life in the Great Valley of Virginia, 1800-1900, eds. Warren Hofstra and Kenneth Koons (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2000): 77-91. This volume was nominated for a Virginia Literary Award by the Virginia Center for the Book at the Library of Virginia. Book Chapter in Edited Volume --'''To Have a Sufficient Maintenance': Women and the Economics of Freedom in Frontier Pennsylvania," in Women and Freedom in Early America, ed. Larry Eldridge (New York: New York University Press, 1997): 167-190. Article -- "'A Tale of Two Towns': Divergent Views of Eighteenth-Century Carlisle," Cumberland County History (Summer 1993): 34-38. Honors and Awards Grant Recipient (with Susan Clemens-Bruder). Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Local History Grant for collaborative oral history project documenting the African-American community of the Lehigh Valley (2007-2008). Andrew H. Mellon Foundation Fellow, Library Company/Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Fall 2005). NEH Summer Institute, British and Indigenous Cultural Encounters in Native North America, John Carter Brown Library (Summer 2005). Faculty Development Summer Research Grant, Muhlenberg College (Summer 2010,2009,2008, 2006, 2004, 2002, 1999). PEP Faculty Seminar and Course Development Award (Spring/ Summer 2002). Research Fellowship. The David Library of the American Revolution, Washington Crossing, PA (Summer 1999). Summer Research Award, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, CSU Northridge (Summer 1997, 1995). CSBS 2000 Course Development Grant, CSU Northridge (Spring 1997). Faculty Research Grant, Office of Research and Sponsored Projects, CSU Northridge (Spring 1997). Best Paper in American History Award, Southwestern Social Science Association Annual Conference (March 1996). Affirmative Action Faculty Development Grant, CSU Northridge (Spring 1995). Glucksman Fellow (1993-94) - Department of History, College of William and Mary. Dissertation Fellow (1992-93) - McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania. |