Research Interests
My research interests bridge multiple fields. Most notably, I work at the intersection of religious and diplomatic history, with a particular interest in the global history of the 19th-century history of the United States. Too often, these fields have been divided and my work seeks to bring them together. I also have a passion for the histories of race, gender and empire, which shapes much of what I do both in the classroom and in my research. Some of my short-form writing on these topics can be found in the sources listed below. See my CV for additional publications.
PUBLISHED ARTICLES AND ESSAYS
“Before Woman’s Work for Woman,” in Missionary Interests, ed. Christopher Jones and David Golding (Forthcoming: Cornell University Press, April 2024)
This essay gave me the opportunity to explore a body of sources that have long fascinated me: women's applications to serve as missionaries in the decades before the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions had a clear policy on whether or not to allow women--particularly unmarried women--to serve at mission stations.
“What is a Missionary Good For, Anyway?: Foreign Relations, Religion, and the Nineteenth Century,” Diplomatic History (June 2022)
In my Bernath Lecture for the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, I urged diplomatic historians to expand their chronological focus to include nineteenth-century (and earlier) histories, using the relationship between foreign missionaries and the state department as a case study.
“The Meaning of Missionary Labor: Evaluating 19th Century Global Missions in the Early 20th Century,” Global Faith, Worldly Power: Evangelical Internationalism and US Empire, ed. Melani McAlister, Axel Schäfer, and John Corrigan (University of North Carolina Press, 2022).
In this volume on evangelical internationalism, I explore debates about missionary methodology--particularly institution-building in medicine and education--and argue that the tensions that culminated in the Modernist/Fundamentalist debates of the early twentieth century had much earlier roots in nineteenth-century missionary experience.
“For Young People: Protestant Missions, Geography, and American Youth at the End of the Nineteenth Century,” in Ideologies and US Foreign Policy, ed. Christopher Nichols and David Milne (Columbia University Press, 2022)
In this volume on ideology and foreign missions, I explored a series of articles designed for children that was published within the Missionary Herald: "For Young People." Juvenile missionary literature was designed to encourage young people to give to the mission cause and (even more importantly) to grow up to be adult supporters of missions--if not missionaries themselves. Accordingly, the column gives us a window into the attempts of missionary supporters to create a missionary ideology in their young readers at a time of transition in the mission movement.
“The Vast Kingdom of God,” in Rosemarie Zagarri and Eliga Gould, eds. “Forum: Situating the United States in Vast Early America” William and Mary Quarterly (Spring 2021)
This essay was part of a forum that sought to explore how the framework of "Vast Early America" works for the early national period. My contribution explored missionaries global travels and writings about geography.
“Foreign Missions and Strategy, Foreign Missions as Strategy” in Rethinking American Grand Strategy, eds. Christopher Nichols, Andrew Preston, and Elizabeth Borgwardt (Oxford University Press, 2021)
In my contribution to this volume's "rethinking" of American Grand Strategy, I posit that we might think of foreign missionaries as grand strategists who had a clear vision for the role of the United States in the world. Their conflicts with other groups of strategists (including, at times, merchants) reveals some of the complications of trying to identify a unified "American" grand strategy.
“The Forgotten Wife: Roxanna Nott and Missionary Conceptions of Marriage,” Journal of Early American Studies, Special Issue on the Global Turn Volume 16, No. 1 (Winter 2018)
The winner of the American Society for Church History's 2019 Jane Dempsey Prize, this essay examined the brief overseas experience of Roxanna Nott, one of the three missionary wives who took part in the ABCFM's first 1812 mission to India. Unlike her revered peers, Anne Judson and Harriet Newell, Nott has been largely left out of studies of women and missions. This article argues that Nott's difficult experiences in Bombay with the men of the mission reveal competing visions of what role women could or should fill as part of "mission families."
“Engaged in the Same Glorious Cause:’ Anglo-American Connections in the American Missionary Entrance into India, 1790-1815.” Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 34, No.1 (Spring 2014).
This article is drawn from the research that led to Christian Imperialism. It focuses on the relationship between American and British evangelicals in establishing the first ABCFM mission to India in 1815.
This essay gave me the opportunity to explore a body of sources that have long fascinated me: women's applications to serve as missionaries in the decades before the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions had a clear policy on whether or not to allow women--particularly unmarried women--to serve at mission stations.
“What is a Missionary Good For, Anyway?: Foreign Relations, Religion, and the Nineteenth Century,” Diplomatic History (June 2022)
In my Bernath Lecture for the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, I urged diplomatic historians to expand their chronological focus to include nineteenth-century (and earlier) histories, using the relationship between foreign missionaries and the state department as a case study.
“The Meaning of Missionary Labor: Evaluating 19th Century Global Missions in the Early 20th Century,” Global Faith, Worldly Power: Evangelical Internationalism and US Empire, ed. Melani McAlister, Axel Schäfer, and John Corrigan (University of North Carolina Press, 2022).
In this volume on evangelical internationalism, I explore debates about missionary methodology--particularly institution-building in medicine and education--and argue that the tensions that culminated in the Modernist/Fundamentalist debates of the early twentieth century had much earlier roots in nineteenth-century missionary experience.
“For Young People: Protestant Missions, Geography, and American Youth at the End of the Nineteenth Century,” in Ideologies and US Foreign Policy, ed. Christopher Nichols and David Milne (Columbia University Press, 2022)
In this volume on ideology and foreign missions, I explored a series of articles designed for children that was published within the Missionary Herald: "For Young People." Juvenile missionary literature was designed to encourage young people to give to the mission cause and (even more importantly) to grow up to be adult supporters of missions--if not missionaries themselves. Accordingly, the column gives us a window into the attempts of missionary supporters to create a missionary ideology in their young readers at a time of transition in the mission movement.
“The Vast Kingdom of God,” in Rosemarie Zagarri and Eliga Gould, eds. “Forum: Situating the United States in Vast Early America” William and Mary Quarterly (Spring 2021)
This essay was part of a forum that sought to explore how the framework of "Vast Early America" works for the early national period. My contribution explored missionaries global travels and writings about geography.
“Foreign Missions and Strategy, Foreign Missions as Strategy” in Rethinking American Grand Strategy, eds. Christopher Nichols, Andrew Preston, and Elizabeth Borgwardt (Oxford University Press, 2021)
In my contribution to this volume's "rethinking" of American Grand Strategy, I posit that we might think of foreign missionaries as grand strategists who had a clear vision for the role of the United States in the world. Their conflicts with other groups of strategists (including, at times, merchants) reveals some of the complications of trying to identify a unified "American" grand strategy.
“The Forgotten Wife: Roxanna Nott and Missionary Conceptions of Marriage,” Journal of Early American Studies, Special Issue on the Global Turn Volume 16, No. 1 (Winter 2018)
The winner of the American Society for Church History's 2019 Jane Dempsey Prize, this essay examined the brief overseas experience of Roxanna Nott, one of the three missionary wives who took part in the ABCFM's first 1812 mission to India. Unlike her revered peers, Anne Judson and Harriet Newell, Nott has been largely left out of studies of women and missions. This article argues that Nott's difficult experiences in Bombay with the men of the mission reveal competing visions of what role women could or should fill as part of "mission families."
“Engaged in the Same Glorious Cause:’ Anglo-American Connections in the American Missionary Entrance into India, 1790-1815.” Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 34, No.1 (Spring 2014).
This article is drawn from the research that led to Christian Imperialism. It focuses on the relationship between American and British evangelicals in establishing the first ABCFM mission to India in 1815.