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 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.
Selected awards, grants, other honors
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
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 during this period.
My first book, The Trial of Frederick Eberle: Language, Patriotism and Citizenship in Philadelphia’s German Community, 1790-1830 (NYU 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.
My current book project focuses on the estimated 30,000 German soldiers that fought on the British side in the American Revolutionary War.
I am also a certified archivist. Before joining Penn State, I was the Research Collections Librarian at the German Society of Pennsylvania, the Fraktur Scholar for the Fraktur Collection Digitization Project at the Free Library of Philadelphia, and an NEH Project Archivist at the American Philosophical Society.
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