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Kirsten Fischer, c.v. page
KIRSTEN FISCHER
Curriculum Vitae
University of
Department of History (612) 262-4456
1110 Heller Hall
271 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN55455
EMPLOYMENT
Associate Professor of History, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. August 2002 – present.
Assistant Professor of History, University of Minnesota, August 2000 – August 2002.
Assistant Professor of History, University of SouthFlorida, Tampa. August 1994 – May, 2000.
EDUCATION
Ph.D., 1994. DukeUniversity, Durham, North Carolina.
M.A., 1989. DukeUniversity, Durham, North Carolina.
B.A., 1985 (cum laude). SmithCollege, Northampton, Massachusetts. One year of study at the University of Hamburg, Germany.
PUBLICATIONS
Books:
American Infidel: Elihu Palmer’s Visionary Religion in the Early United States (forthcoming, University of Pennsylvania Press).
Unfamiliar Truths: Family Stories of its German Past. A hybrid memoir/history of three generations and the stories they tell of war, exile, and home-coming (book manuscript in progress).
Suspect Relations: Sex, Race, and Resistance in Colonial North Carolina (Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 2002).
Colonial American History. Co-editor with Eric Hinderaker in the series Blackwell Readers in American Social and Cultural History (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 2002).
Articles, Book Chapters, Essays:
“Vitalism in America: Elihu Palmer’s Radical Religion in the Early Republic,” William and Mary Quarterly 73:3 (July 2016): 501-530.
Uncommon Sense—The Blog, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture:
August 17, 2016, “How I learned to stop worrying and love Reader D”
December 2, 2015, “ON (Finally) Seeing What’s Right in Front of You When It’s Not What You Expected,”
“Cosmic Kinship: John Stewart’s ‘Sensate Matter’’ in the Early Republic,” Common-place.org (Spring Issue, 2015).
“Religion,” inThe Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment, Mark G. Spencer, ed. (Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2015), vol. 2, pp. 887-892.
‘Religion Governed by Terror’: A Deist Critique of Fearful Christianity in the Early American
Republic,” Revue Française D'Études AméricainesNo. 125 (3e Trimestre, 2010): 13-26.
“‘As Near to Atheism as Twilight is to Darkness’: Thomas Paine’s Deism in a ReligiousRepublic,” in Thomas Paine:Common Sense for the Modern Era, ed. Ronald F. King and ElsieBegler (San Diego State University Press, 2007), pp. 260-273.
“Persona Non Grata: A Homophonic Question.” Essay on Thomas Paine for the program of “Thom Pain (based on nothing),” a play by Will Eno performed at the Mixed Blood Theatre, Minneapolis, MN, February 8-24, 2007.
“Sex, Race, and the Colonial Project,” with Jennifer L. Morgan, William and Mary Quarterly 60:1 (January 2003): 197-198.
“The Imperial Gaze: Native American, African American, and Colonial Women in European Eyes,” in ACompanion to American Women's History, ed. Nancy A. Hewitt (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), pp. 3-19.
“In Retrospect: The Career of Francis Jennings,” Reviews in American History30:4 (December, 2002): 517-29.
“‘Common Disturbers of the Peace’: The Politics of White Women's Sexual Misconduct in Colonial North Carolina,” in Beyond Image and Convention: Explorations in Southern Women’s History (Southern Women Series) ed. Janet Lee Coryell, Martha H. Swain, and Sandra gio Treadway (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998), pp. 10-27.
“‘False, Feigned, and Scandalous Words’: Sexual Slander and Racial Ideology Among Whites in Colonial North Carolina,” in The Devil's Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South, ed. Catherine Clinton and Michele Gillespie (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 139-53.
Book Reviews:
Caroline Winterer, American Enlightenments: Pursuing Happiness in the Age of Reason (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016) in Journal of the Early Republic (forthcoming in fall, 2018).
Scott Cleary and Ivy Linton Stabell, eds., New Directions in Thomas Paine Studies (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) in Cercles: revue pluridisciplinaire du monde Anglophone (2017)
Emily Clark, The Strange History of the American Quadroon: Free Women of Color in the Revolutionary Atlantic World (University of North Carolina Press, 2013) inThe American Historical Review 119: 2 (April 2014): 518-519.
John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? An Historical Introduction (Westminster John Knox Press, 2011) in Church History 81:2 (June 2012): 476-78.
J. Rixey Ruffin,A Paradise of Reason: William Bentley and Enlightenment Christianity in the Early Republic(Oxford University Press, 2008) inChurch History78:2 (June, 2009): 415-418.
Rebecca J. Fraser, Courtship and Love Among the Enslaved in North Carolina (University Press of Mississippi, 2007) in Journal of Southern History75:1 (February, 2009): 145-146.
Sharon Block, Rape and Sexual Power in Early America (University of North Carolina Press, 2006) in Journal of Social History41:3(Spring, 2008): 775-778
Clare A. Lyons,Sex Among the Rabble: An intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730-1830 (University of North Carolina Press, 2006) in American Historical Review (April, 2007):501-502
Peter Wallenstein, Tell the Court I Love My Wife: Race, Marriage, and Law—An American History(Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) in American Historical Review (February, 2004): 193-194
Joshua D. Rothman, Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families Across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787-1861 (University of North Carolina Press, 2003) inWilliam and Mary Quarterly (April, 2004):371-375.
Over the Threshold: Intimate Violence in Early America, ed. Christine Daniels and Michael Kennedy (Routledge, 1999) and Deborah Nevis, Murdered by his Wife: A History with Documentation of the Joshua Spooner Murder and Execution of His Wife, Bathsheba, Who Was Hanged in Worcester, Massachusetts, 2 July 1778 (University of Massachusetts Press, 1999) in Journal of American History (March, 2002): 1502-1504.
Inequality in Early America, ed. Carla Gardina Pestana and Sharon V. Salinger (University Press of New England, 1999) in The Historian (Spring, 2001): 639-640.
Jane Kamensky, Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in Early New England (Oxford University Press, 1997) in Law and History Review (Summer, 2000): 468-470.
Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, ed. Andrew R.L. Cayton and Fredrika J. Teute (University of North Carolina Press, 1998) in The Western Historical Quarterly (February, 2000): 78-79.
Theda Perdue, Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835 (University of Nebraska Press, 1998) in Social History (January, 1999): 91-93.
AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS
2016-2017Imagine Fund Award, University of Minnesota
2016Single Semester Leave granted for the fall semester
2016Peterson Research Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.
2016Faculty Research Travel Award, Department of History, University of Minnesota
2013McMillan Travel Research Award, University of Minnesota
2011-2012Fulbright Award. Heidelberg Center for American Studies, University of Heidelberg, Germany
2011Recipient of the Horace T. Morse-University of Minnesota Alumni Association Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education
2008-2009Deutsche Bank Junior Scholar-in-Residence Fellowship, Heidelberg Center for
American Studies, University of Heidelberg, Germany
2007-2010University of Minnesota: McKnight Research Award
2007Chair’s Initiative Faculty Research Grant
2002NEH Summer Fellowship
2001-2002University of Minnesota: Grant-in-Aid Fellowship
2001University of Minnesota: McKnight Summer Fellowship
2001 University of Minnesota: Faculty Summer Research Fellowship
1999The Newberry Library, Chicago: NEH/Lloyd Lewis post-doctoral fellowship
1998TannerHumanitiesCenter, University of Utah: post-doctoral fellowship
1997 North Caroliniana Society: Archie K. Davis Fellowship
1995University of SouthFlorida: Research and Creative Scholarship Grant
1993-94National Endowment for the Humanities: Dissertation Grant
1992-93DukeUniversity: Special Collections Reference Internship
1991-92Forest History Society: F.K. Weyerhaeuser Fellowship
1991American Historical Association: Michael Kraus Research Grant
1987-90DukeUniversity: Chairman's Fellowship in American History
TEACHING
Undergraduate Courses:
Religion and the American Culture Wars
“Sinners, Saints, and Savages”: Religious Encounters in Early North America
History through Memoir
Radicalism in Early America
America in a Revolutionary Age
Authority and Rebellion: American History to 1865
Graduate Seminars:
Readings in Early American History
Race in Early North America
America in a Revolutionary Age
Religion and Society in Early America
The American Enlightenment and Religion
Cultural Encounters in Early North America
Religion and the American Founding
History, Religion, and the Culture Wars
History through Memoir
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS AND COMMENTS
“‘Benevolence shall gush in limpid streams from the heart’: Vitalist Science, Republican Virtue, and Religious Infidelity in the 1790s.” Paper to be presented at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians, Sacramento, CA, April 12-14, 2018.
“Democratic Anxiety: Fears about Religious Freethought and Political Sedition in the Early American Republic.” Paper to be presented at a special topics conference on Religion and Politics in Early America, St. Louis, MO, March 1-4, 2018.
“Atheism, Treason, and the ‘Columbian Illuminati.’” Paper presented on a panel sponsored by the Society of Early Americanists at the annual meeting of the American Literature Association, Boston, May 25-28, 2017.
“‘Only the best known and most approved French authors’: Religious Freethought and the Circulating Library of Hocquet Caritat and John Fellows in New York City in the 1790s.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Minneapolis, March 30-April 2, 2017.
Comment on panel titled “Vagaries of the Slave Market in Colonial America” at the annual conference of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Worcester, Massachusetts, June 24-26, 2016.
“On Gender and Genius: John Stewart, Transatlantic Traveller.” Presentation at the roundtable on “Gender and Genius in the Early Republic” atthe annual meeting of the Society for Historians of the EarlyAmericanRepublic, Raleigh, NC, July 16-19, 2015.
Comment on panel titled“Evaluating Missionary Progress” at the conference on “Missionary Encounters in the Early Modern World, University of Minnesota, May 27-29, 2015.
“The Truth of the Matter: Dr. Isaac Ledyard’s Vitalism in Revolutionary America.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Historians of the EarlyAmericanRepublic, St. Louis, MO, July 18-21, 2013.
"Universal Benevolence and the Science of Religion: Elihu Palmer's Vitalist Materialism in the early American Republic."Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians, San Francisco, April 11-14, 2013.
"Enlightenment Heritage: Vitalist Materialism and its Radical Egalitarian Promise in the Early American Republic." Paper presented at the meeting of the French Association for American Studies, University of Perpignan, France, May 23-27, 2012.
Comment on panel titled“Women, War, and Violence in Early America.” Fifteenth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Amherst, Massachusetts, June 9-11, 2011.
“Elihu Palmer’s Enlightenment: Vitalist Materialism in a Transatlantic Context.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, Boston, January 6-9, 2011.
“At Home in the Universe: Elihu Palmer’s Pantheism and the Question of Nationalism in the EarlyAmerican Republic.”Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians, WashingtonD.C., April 7-10, 2010.
Comment on panel titled “Religion and the Senses in the 18th Century.” American Society of Church History Session held at the American Historical Association: Annual Meeting, San Diego, January 7-10, 2010.
“The Frightening Prospect of a Fearless Deism: Eighteenth-Century Arguments over the Proper Place of Fear in Christian Religion.” Paper presented at the French Association for American Studies conference: “The Fear Factor,” Besançon - Université de Franche-Comté, May 28-30, 2009.
“The Joy of Cosmic Kinship: ‘Wonder’ in the Writings of Thomas Paine and Elihu Palmer, American Deists.” Paper presented at the Second Biennial Conference in Early American and Atlantic History, organized by the European Group in Early American History and held at the University of Warwick in Venice, Italy, December 13-14, 2008.
“‘Beyond the Law of GOD as of Man’: The Role of Religion in Thomas Paine’s Analysis of Poverty and Equal Rights.” Paper presented at the conference on “Thomas Paine and the American Civil Liberties,” University of Milan, October 20, 2008
“‘The Best Service I Can Perform’: Deism and Revolutionary Politics in the Work of Thomas Paine.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Historians of the EarlyAmericanRepublic, Philadelphia, July 17-20, 2008.
“‘Delight in Murder, Misery, and Eternal Fire’: Critics of Biblical Violence and Christian Doctrine in the Early AmericanRepublic.” Paper presented at the conference on “Religion and Violence,” YaleUniversity, New Haven, Connecticut, April 10-13, 2008.
“Enchanted Deists: Thomas Paine’s ‘Society of Worlds’ and Elihu Palmer’s ‘true connection with Nature.’”Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians,Minneapolis, MN, March 31, 2007.
“‘Contributing to the Happiness of Living Creation’: The Spiritual ‘Pull’ of Deism in the Early United States.” Paper presented at the Twelfth Annual Conference of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, LavalUniversity, Québec, Canada, June 9-11, 2006.
“Deism in the Early Republic: Debating the Role of Religion in the Public Sphere.” Paper presented at the BostonCollege Conference on the History of Religion, BostonMassachusetts, March 24-25, 2006.
“‘As Near to Atheism as Twilight is to Darkness’: Tom Paine's Deism in a ReligiousRepublic.” Paper presented at the Symposium on “Thomas Paine—Common Sense for the Modern Era,” San DiegoStateUniversity, October 21-22, 2005.
Comment on panel titled“Sacrifice and Sexuality: Cultural Constructions of Bodies in the Americas.” Eleventh Annual Institute Conference, Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture, Santa Barbara, CA, June 24-26, 2005.
Comment on panel titled“Lives, Names, and Bodies: Women at the Crux of Early American Empire.” Thirteenth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Scripps College, Claremont, California, June 2-5, 2005.
Comment on panel titled “Somewhere Between Slavery and Freedom: Free Blacks and Economic Opportunity in the Old Northwest.” OhioValley History Conference, WesternKentuckyUniversity, Bowling Green, Kentucky, October 19-20, 2001.
Comment on panel titled“Regulating Interracial Unions.” First national conference on Sexuality in Early America, co-sponsored by the McNeilCenter for Early American Studies and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Philadelphia, June 1-2, 2001.
“‘Without Sympathy or Indignation’: Nationalism and the Cincinnati Race Riot of 1829.”Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, Boston, January 4-7, 2001.
"'Mistresses of Their Own Bodies': Sexual Relations Between Native American Women and Anglo-American Men in Colonial North Carolina." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory, Mashantucket, Connecticut, October 20-24, 1999.
"Indian Wives and Trading Girls: Cross-Cultural Sex in Native North Carolina." Paper presented at the Fellows' Seminar, The Newberry Library, Chicago, April 12, 1999.
"'Brutes ... whose Natures seem made to bear it': Sexualized Violence and the Embodiment of Race in Colonial North Carolina." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Studies Association, Seattle, November 19-22, 1998.
"Beyond the Pale: Misbehaving Women and the Politics of Deviance in Colonial North Carolina." Paper presented at the De Bartolo Conference on 18th-Century Studies, Tampa, Feb. 19-21, 1998.
"'Born of a Free Women': Free Black Families and the Struggle for Self-Determination in Colonial North Carolina." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association, Atlanta, November 5-8, 1997.
"'False, Feigned, and Scandalous Words': Sexual Slander and Racial Ideology Among Whites in Colonial North Carolina." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians, San Francisco, April 17-20, 1997.
"Embodiments of Power: Slavery and Sexualized Violence in Colonial North Carolina." Paper presented at the Tenth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, June 7-9, 1996.
"'Kiss the Book and Tale a Hundred Lyes': Women's Speech and Resistance to Authority in Colonial North Carolina." Paper presented at the first annual conference of the Institute of Early American History and Culture, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, June 2-4, 1995.
"'Disturbing the King's Peace': The Politics of Sexual Misconduct in Colonial North Carolina." Paper presented at the Southern Association for Women Historians: Third Southern Conference on Women's History, RiceUniversity, Houston, June 2-5, 1994.
"The Institution of Illegitimacy: Race, Class, and the Sexual Regulation of Servant Women in Colonial North Carolina." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, San Francisco, January 6-9, 1994.
INVITED PRESENTATIONS:
"Fellow Travelers: Freethinkers in New York City, 1796." New York University Atlantic World Workshop, November 21, 2017.
Session on “Enlightenment Monotheism” at the “Conversations on Monotheism: A summer workshop for Faculty and Graduate Students,” UMN, August 15, 2017.
“Pantheism Comes to America: Elihu Palmer’s Radical Cosmology in the Early American Republic.” Presentation at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies, January 12, 2012.
“The Historical Discipline in American Doctoral Programs and the Future of Area Studies.” Panelist at the conference on Internationalisierungder Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften zwischen Area Studies und systematischen Disziplinen, Deutsche Historische Institut, Paris, France, November 3, 2011.
“Religion and the Culture Wars.” Guest presentation to Mindstretch, a men’s reading group in St. Paul, December 8, 2010.
“The Mainstreaming of Evangelicalism in America.” Presentation for a Salon of the Center
for German and European Studies, University of Minnesota, December 6, 2010.
“Religion and the U.S. Founding: History as Ammunition in the Culture Wars,” presented at Spring Academy, a week-long conference of Ph.D. students from many countries, held at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies, April 3, 2009.
“National Treasures, Myths, and Milestones: Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence.” The MinnesotaHistoryCenter, May 6, 2008.
“Religion and the Founders: A Conversation about Original Intent.” Keynote Address for the
Student History Research Symposium, St. Mary’s University, Winona, MN, April 19, 2008.
“The Search for a Rational Religion in the Early Republic,” presentation in the series American Studies in the Twenty First Century, Department of American Studies, University of Minnesota, February 19, 2007.
“Humanity’s Place in the Universe: Modesty and Morality in American Deism.” Seminar of the McNeilCenter for Early American History, JohnsHopkinsUniversity, Baltimore, Maryland, October 27, 2006.
“The First American Empire,” part of the Teach-In Series “The War on Iraq: Critical Perspectives” at the University of Minnesota, April 16, 2003.
"Dangerous Liaisons: The Racial Politics of Illicit Sex in Colonial North Carolina." TannerHumanitiesCenter, University of Utah, February 16, 1999.
"Marking Race: Violence and Racism in the Enlightenment South." The Newberry Seminar in Early American History, Newberry Library, Chicago, October 23, 1997.
Public Pedagogy:
“Deism.” A three-hour class for seminarians of the Unitarian Universalist Church, held at the United Theological Seminary, New Brighton, MN, November 12, 2015.
“Religion and the Founders,” a lecture and workshop presented at a teacher training seminar organized by the Center for United States Studiesat the Martin-Luther-University in Halle-Wittenbergand by the Consulate General in Leipzig. Lutherstadt Wittenberg, Germany, November 24-26, 2011.
“Religious Freedom Then: James Madison and the Fight for Religious Freedom in Virginia,” an interactive workshop with high school students involved in LEADD (Leadership Education Advancing Democracy and Diversity), a project of the Interfaith Youth Leadership Coalition, Carondolet Center, St. Paul, MN, October 21, 2010.