Coordinator, Public History Program:
Director, Initiative in Public Humanities, School of Arts and Sciences
Co-Editor of Book Reviews, Journal of the Early Republic
Editor, Global Perspectives on Public History Series, Routledge
Co-Chair, Advisory Council, Revolution NJ, New Jersey Historical Commission
Co-Director of the RCHA Seminar, "Repairing the Past," with Prof. Jochen Hellbeck, 2022-24
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan is Assistant Professor of History at Rutgers University. Her first book, Vagrants and Vagabonds: Poverty and Mobility in the Early American Republic (New York University Press, 2019), is a legal and social history of the criminalization of homelessness through vagrancy laws and poor laws in the early national Northeastern states.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, she worked as a public historian in many different capacities, including as an archivist and research analyst for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives Archives from 2012-2016. O'Brassill-Kulfan has directed the undergraduate Public History Program at Rutgers New Brunswick since 2016 and the graduate Public Humanities Initiative since 2019. In 2024, she received the G. Wesley Johnson Award for the best article published in The Public Historian during the previous year, and in 2020, the NJ Historical Commission’s Award of Recognition for Outstanding Service to Public Knowledge and Preservation of the History of New Jersey. She is the Editor for the Routledge series "Global Perspectives on Public History" and Co-Editor of Book Reviews for the Journal of the Early Republic.
O'Brassill-Kulfan's research focuses on social and legal histories of poverty, mobility, labor, and carcerality in the early American republic, as well as how these topics are and have been interpreted in public historical work on US history more broadly. She is currently working on a public history-oriented book tentatively titled Boot Straps and Alms Boxes: Public Histories of Poverty at US Museums and Historic Sites, as well projects related to rent distraint and the evolution of the poverty line in 18th-19th century US history.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
- Vagrants and Vagabonds: Poverty and Mobility in the Early American Republic (New York University Press, 2019)
- Public History in and of Pennsylvania (edited collection under contract, Temple University Press), with Margaret Jerrido and Jeanine Mazak-Kahne.
- “Silences and Shouts in the Complex Commonwealth,” in Public History in and of Pennsylvania (Temple University Press), under contract; anticipated 2025.
- “Relieving the city from beggars and the poor”: The criminalization of poverty and mobility in the long 19th century,” in The Routledge History of Crime in America, eds James M. Campbell and Vivien Miller (Abingdon: Routledge), forthcoming 2024.
- “Means of Subsistence: Vagrancy and the Criminalization of Poverty in the 19th century US,” in Making the Vagrant, Controlling Labor Mobility (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press), eds Margo De Koster, Johan Heinsen, and Paulo Terra, forthcoming 2025.
- “Overseers of the Poor: Relief, Surveillance, and Control in the Early Republic Northeast,” Journal of the Early Republic 44, no. 2 (Summer 2024).
- “Pandemic from the Margins: How United-States-based College Students Think the Pandemic Should be Remembered,” co-authored with Jill Strauss, in The Covid-19 Pandemic Memory: Remembrance, Commemoration, and Archiving in Crisis, eds Orli Fridman and Sarah Gensburger (London: Palgrave Macmillan), 2023.
- “‘People first’: Commemorating Houselessness and Poverty,” The Public Historian vol. 45, no. 1 (January 2023).
- G. Wesley Johnson Award for Best Article published in The Public Historian in 2023, awarded by National Council on Public History
- “Labor Sweated Here: Commemorating Workers and Their Activism in Paterson, New Jersey,” Where are the Workers?: Labor's Stories at Museums and Historic Sites, eds Robert Forrant and Mary Anne Trasciatti (University of Illinois Press, 2022).
- “’Severe punishment for their misfortunes and poverty’: Philadelphia’s Arch Street Jail, 1804-1837,” Special Issue: Incarceration in Pennsylvania History, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 143, no. 3 (October 2019).
- “Public Histories of Poverty,” History@Work, The NCPH Blog, February 4, 2019.
- "The United States’ long history of criminalizing homelessness," From The Square: NYU Press Blog, January 14, 2019.
- “’Vagrant Negroes:’ The Policing of Labor and Mobility in the Old South,” in Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power, eds Keri Leigh Merritt and Matthew Hild (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida), 2018
- "Campus history as public history: Interpreting slavery through historical walking tours," History@Work, The NCPH Blog, June 20, 2018
- “The Antebellum Era (1820-1860)," and "The Colored Female Free Produce Society," in Women in American History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio), 2017
- “Vagabonds and Paupers: Race and Illicit Mobility in the Early Republic,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 83, no. 4 (Autumn 2016): 443-469
- “Vagrancy,” The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities (MARCH), Rutgers University-Camden, 2016
SELECTED PUBLIC HISTORY ENGAGEMENT
- Signatory and cited researcher, Social Scientists Amicus Brief (and other briefs) for Grants Pass v. Johnson, Supreme Court Case, April 2024
- Member, Homelessness Research Network, National Alliance to End Homelessness (2024-present)
- Facilitator, Pequannock Community History Project (2022-2024)
- Lead Scholar and co-facilitator, Geology Museum Collections Project, Rutgers University (2020-2024)
- Co-curator, with Paulie Wenger and Spring 2022 Public History undergraduate students, “War on Tramps” exhibit, Burlington County Prison Museum and Lyceum, 2022-23
- Co-Director, Arts Integration Research (AIR) Collaborative, Rutgers, with Anette Freytag and Jackie Thaw
- Lead Scholar, Community History Program, New Jersey Council for the Humanities (2020-2023)
- Member, New Jersey Historical Commission’s Advisory Council on New Jersey's United States Semiquincentennial Initiative, Revolution NJ
- Contributing Member/University Partner, Humanities Action Lab
- Co-PI for “Shelter”, Luce Foundation Grant-funded Public Humanities Project during the Covid-19 Pandemic (2020-2021)
- Co-organizer (with Donna Gustafson), New Jersey Stories: New Perspectives on American Paintings in the Zimmerli Art Museum Public History Project
- Curator & supervisor of student curators, “Climate Justice is Worker Justice in New Brunswick, NJ,” in Humanities Action Lab traveling exhibit, Climates of Inequality: Stories of Environmental Justice
- Consultant, organizer, & supervisor of student docents, Historical Walking Tours, Scarlet & Black Project, Rutgers University
- Research Analyst and Archivist, Pennsylvania House of Representatives Archives
- Exhibitions Research Consultant, Department of Human History, National Museums of Northern Ireland
- Public Programs Coordinator, Ephrata Public Library
RECENT COURSES TAUGHT
- Public History: Theory, Method, and Practice
- Public History Internship
- New Jersey History
- Revising Rutgers: Architecture, History, & Preservation on Campus (co-taught with Prof. Carla Yanni, Art History)
- History of Homelessness: Unhoused Populations in US History
- Introduction to Public Humanities (graduate)
AWARDS & FELLOWSHIPS
- New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance Teaching Award, 2024
- Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship, Massachusetts Historical Society, 2023-2024
- Research Fellowship, Program in Early American Economy & Society, Library Company of Philadelphia, 2023-2024
- Co-PI, Grounded Knowledge Project Micro-Grant, Pequannock Community History Project, Institute for Diversity & Civic Life, 2023-2024
- G. Wesley Johnson Award for Best Article published in The Public Historian in 2023, awarded by National Council on Public History in 2024
- Visiting Professor, Research University Initiative of Excellence, University of Wroclaw, Poland, 2024
- Humanities-Based Research Grant, Institute for Global Racial Justice, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, 2022-2023
- Co-PI, Sustaining Public Engagement Grant, American Council of Learned Societies, 2022-23
- “The Way Forward” Multi-Institutional Innovation Grant co-awardee, Bringing Theory to Practice, Elon University, 2021
- Award of Recognition for Significant Contributions to State History, New Jersey Historical Commission, 2020
- Larry J. Hackman Research Award, New York State Archives, 2020-2021
- Faculty Fellow, Center for Cultural Analysis, Rutgers University, 2019-2020
- Humanities Innovation Block Grant, School of Graduate Studies, Rutgers University, 2018-2019
- Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Fellowship, Library Company of Philadelphia and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 2017-2018
- Digital Humanities Initiative Seed Grant, Rutgers University, 2017-2018
- Prindle Institute Fellow, Prindle Institute for Ethics Seminar on Ethics and Epistemology in the Archives, Depauw University, 2016
- Lord Baltimore Fellowship, Maryland Historical Society, 2015-2016
- College of Arts, Humanities, and Law Research Grant, University of Leicester, 2015
- Peter Parish Memorial Award, Association of British American Nineteenth Century Historians, 2014
