I am a historian of early American political economy and the Atlantic world specializing in money, debt, and finance. My current research explores the role of money in the formation and development of colonial spaces and the conflicts that arose within them in eighteenth-century North America. I am especially interested in money as a terrain of contestation over the nature of value, distribution of resources, and terms of public belonging during times of economic and social transformation. I approach money as a process and a relationship as a much as a thing: a moral obligation; a shared language; a technology of power. To return money to history, I draw insights from anthropology, sociology, political science, and heterodox economics.
- Early America
- Atlantic World
- History of Capitalism
- History of Money
- U.S. History
Promise to Pay: The Politics and Power of Money in Early America (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2024)
“Capitalism Indivisible,” Enterprise & Society (November 2023)
“To Counterfeit Is Death? Money, Print, and Punishment in the Early American Public Sphere,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal Vol. 21, Issue 2 (Spring 2023): 233-271.
Review of Claire Priest, Credit Nation: Property Laws and Institutions in Early America in American Historical Review Vol. 128, Issue 2 (June 2023): 1008-1009.
“Unmaking the Myth of Barter,” Law & History Review‘s Docket, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Winter 2023)
Review of Joshua R. Greenberg, Bank Notes and Shinplasters: The Rage for Paper Money in the Early Republic in Journal of the Early Republic Vol. 41, Issue 4 (Winter 2021): 679-681.
“The Blood That Nourishes the Body Politic: The Origins of Paper Money in Early America,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal Vol. 17, Issue 1 (Winter 2019): 1-36.
Review of Justin du Rivage, Revolution Against Empire: Taxes, Politics, and the Origins of American Independence in Journal of British Studies Vol. 57, Issue 2 (Spring 2018), pp. 371-373.
“America’s First Economic Stimulus Package: Paper Money and the Body Politic in Colonial Pennsylvania, 1715-1730,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies Vol. 83, No. 4 (October 2016): 529-557.
*Received the Robert Grant Crist Prize for best article by a graduate student in Pennsylvania History
HIST 17A The American People
HIST 201AM Advanced Historical Literature: Trade, Politics, and Power in Early North America and the Atlantic World
HIST 193MA The Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800
HIST 101MQ Readings in the Social History of Money and Debt
HIST 161R Research Seminar in Early American History
NEH Fellowship, The Huntington Library, 2019-2020
MHS-NEH Fellowship, Massachusetts Historical Society, 2019-2020 (declined)
Shotwell Dissertation Fellowship, Department of History, Boston University, 2016-2017
W.B.H. Dowse Fellowship, Massachusetts Historical Society, 2015-2016
Program in Early American Economy and Society (PEAES) Short-Term Fellowship, The Library Company of Philadelphia, 2015-2016