RESEARCH INTEREST
I am a historian of the twentieth-century United States with broad interests in the state, political economy, women and gender, social and political movements, the military, and foreign affairs. I am the author or editor of four books, including From Welfare to Workfare: The Unintended Consequences of Liberal Reform, 1945-1964 (University of North Carolina, 2005) and The Rise of the Military Welfare State (Harvard University Press, 2015). My work has been supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, among others, and I served as the Harold K. Johnson Chair in Military History at the US Army War College. I am a series editor of Power, Politics, and the World at Penn Press, and I am currently writing a book about grassroots right-wing participation in US foreign policy.
RECENT COURSES
Undergraduate
- Sex, Gender and the U.S. Military
- Law and History
- U.S. Women's History
- Post-1945 U.S. History
- The History of Poverty and Economic Crisis in the United States
- The 1960s
- United States History since 1865
Graduate
- Transnational Social Movements in the Twentieth Century: US and the World
- Readings in Twentieth-Century U.S. History
- Law and History
- The Teaching of History
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
The Military and the Market
Penn Press, 2022
The Rise of the Military Welfare State
Harvard University Press, 2015
Welfare in the United States: A History with Documents, 1935–1996
Routledge, 2009
From Welfare to Workfare: The Unintended Consequences of Liberal Reform, 1945-1965
UNC Press, 2005
Books
- The Military and the Market: New Histories of War, Capitalism, and Empire, edited with Mark R. Wilson (Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2022)
- The Rise of the Military Welfare State (Harvard University Press, 2015).
- Welfare in the United States: A History with Documents, co-authored and edited with Premilla Nadasen and Marisa Chappell (New York: Routledge, 2009).
- From Welfare to Workfare, the Unintended Consequences of Liberal Reform, 1945-1965, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005).
Articles and Essays
- “Transferring Warmaking to the Private Sector,” with Mark Wilson, in The Military and the Market: New Histories of War, Capitalism, and Empire, edited with Mark Wilson (Philadelphia: Penn Press, forthcoming 2022)
- “Women, Gender and the State,” with Rachel Moran, in Nancy Hewitt and Anne Valk, eds., Companion to American Women’s History (Willey-Blackwell, forthcoming 2020)
- “Military Demographics in the Twentieth Century,” in Ed Martini and David Kieran, eds., At War: Militarism and American Culture in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2018).
- “The Soldier-Breadwinner And The Army Family: Gender and Social Welfare in the Post-1945 U.S. Military and Society,” in Gender And The Long Postwar: Reconsiderations of the United States and the Two Germanys, 1945-1989, Karen Hagemann and Sonia Michel, eds., (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014).
- “Stepping into It: Lessons Learned from Entering the History You’re Writing,” Journal of Policy History, Vol. 24, no. 1, (Winter 2012).
- “‘The Army is a Service Not a Job’: Unionization, Employment, and the Meaning of Military Service in the Late-Twentieth United States,” International Labor and Working-Class History, vol. 80, (Fall, 2011).
- “Philanthropy, Feminism, and Left Liberalism, 1960-1985,” Journal of Women’s History, vol. 20, no. 4, (Winter 2008).
Amicus Briefs
- Brief for Jane Doe 2 et al., Jane Doe 2 et al. v. Trump, December 10, 2018, US Court of Appeals, District of Columbia, for the Organization of American Historians and 47 Historians of the Military, National Security, and Foreign Relations
Opinion Editorials and Articles
- “The Wrong Side of History: The All-Volunteer Force,” Vox, April 4, 2019, https://www.vox.com/2019/3/27/18185871/military-draft-conscription
- “Too Much War, Not Enough College,” The War Room, June 20, 2018, https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/too-much-war-not-enough-college/
- “For America, Welfare is Essential for Warfare,” War on the Rocks, May 4, 2018, https://warontherocks.com/2018/05/for-america-welfare-is-essential-for-warfare/
- “Trump’s Trans Ban Isn’t Just Anti-Gay. It’s Anti-Military,” Washington Post, July 28, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/07/28/the-battle-over-who-can-serve-is-a-battle-over-who-we-are/?utm_term=.35530449d91a
- “Welfare’s Last Stand,” Aeon Magazine: Ideas and Culture, September 2015, https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-us-military-became-a-welfare-state
- “Reimagining the Welfare State,” Jacobin, July 23, 2015, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/07/fdr-social-security-gi-bill/, 3,000 words.
SELECTED MAJOR AWARDS
- Fellow, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, 2022-2023
- Fellow, Dorothy and Lewis Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, New York Public Library, 2020-2021
- Harold K. Johnson Chair in Military History, US Army War College, 2017-2018
- Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2008-2009
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
- American Historical Association
- Organization of American Historians
- Society for the History of American Foreign Relations
- Coordinating Council on Women’s History
- Society for Military History
- US Intellectual History
