Department of History

Dissertation: Women’s Communities of Care in Revolutionary New England

My project examines the networks New England women mobilized to mitigate violence in the era of the American Revolution. Gendered violence ranged from domestic to state sanctioned acts that demonstrated New England’s patriarchal and slave holding society’s need to exert power over women. Women on a spectrum of unfreedom turned to gendered connections and support in response to bodily harm. Communities of caretakers might not have destroyed patriarchal structures, but the political content of social actions in the face of violence created new political constituencies across the war’s home front.