Biography
Teaching interests and courses taught
Colonial America; the American Revolution; Jeffersonian and Jacksonian America; American urban history; American immigration; public history; history and memory.
Selected awards, grants, other honors
- 2023 Society of the Cincinnati Prize
- 2008 St. Paul’s, Biglerville Prize for best book in Lutheran church history
- Jacob M. Price Research Fellowship, Clements Library, University of Michigan
- American Philosophical Society Franklin Research Grant
- DAAD Fellowship (Research Stay for University Academics and Scientists)
- Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati Fellowship
- German Historical Institute Research Fellowship
- David Library of the American Revolution Research Fellowship
- Frances Lewis Fellowship in Gender and Women’s Studies, Virginia Historical Society
- Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Fellowship, Library Company of Philadelphia
Research Interests
I am an early American historian with a research focus on the American Revolution and Early Republic. I am especially interested in the experiences of German-speaking people in North America between roughly 1775 and 1830.
My first book, The Trial of Frederick Eberle: Language, Patriotism and Citizenship in Philadelphia’s German Community, 1790-1830 (New York University Press, 2008), uses the 1816 trial of fifty-nine German Americans as a prism through which to explore prevalent notions of citizenship, language, and patriotism in the first four decades after the Revolution. The book was the winner of the St. Paul’s, Biglerville Prize for best book in Lutheran church history published between 2005 and 2008.
My second monograph, Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War (Oxford University Press, 2022), is a ground-breaking reimagining of Britain’s war against American independence from the perspective of the German soldiers, a people uniquely positioned both in the midst of the war and at its margins. It was the winner of the 2023 Society of the Cincinnati Prize, a major award given annually for an outstanding book that advances our understanding of the American Revolution and its legacy.
Publications
Selected Publications
Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022)
The Trial of Frederick Eberle: Language, Patriotism and Citizenship in Philadelphia’s German Community, 1790-1830 (New York: New York University Press, 2008).
“The Decision to Hire German Troops in the War of American Independence: Reactions in Britain and North America, 1774-1776.” Early American Studies 13 (1), (Winter 2015): 111-150.
“Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart’s Deutsche Chronik and the War of American Independence, 1774-1777.” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 38 (3), (September 2015): 443-458.
“German-Americans, Nativism, and the Tragedy of Paul Schoeppe, 1869-1872.” The Journal of the Civil War Era 5 (1), (March 2015): 97-125.
Education
Ph.D. History, Brown University, Providence, RI
M.A. History, Brown University, Providence, RI
B.A. History, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA
History and Cultural Anthropology, Georg-August University, Göttingen, Germany