Women participated in the American Revolution in complex and varied ways, and the Revolution transformed their place in the new nation. This panel discussion convenes several contributors to a new anthology, Women Waging War in the American Revolution, and will be moderated by Dr. Holly Mayer, professor emerita of history at Duquesne University. Panelists Benjamin L. Carp, associate professor of history at Brooklyn College; Lauren Duval, assistant professor of history at Oklahoma University; Carin Bloom, manager of programming and education at the Historic Charleston Foundation; and Don Hagist, editor of the Journal of the American Revolution, will discuss various challenges and hardships faced by women throughout the Revolutionary War and will highlight their contributions to the new book, as well as answering audience questions.
About the Moderator
Holly Mayer, Ph.D., is professor emerita of history at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and currently serves as the 2021-2022 Charles Boal Ewing Chair in Military History at the United States Military Academy, West Point. In 2016-2017, she was the Harold K. Johnson Chair of Military History at the U.S. Army War College. Her interest in the social, cultural and military histories of late eighteenth-century North America informed her latest book, Congress’s Own: A Canadian Regiment, the Continental Army, and American Union (University of Oklahoma Press, 2021), as well as her earlier book, Belonging to the Army: Camp Followers and Community during the American Revolution (University of South Carolina Press, 1996). In addition to authoring various journal and anthology essays, Mayer was co-editor (with David E. Shi) of For the Record: A Documentary History of America (W.W. Norton & Company, multiple editions). Most recently, she is the editor of the anthology Women Waging War in the American Revolution, published in August 2022 by the University of Virginia Press.
About the Panelists
Benjamin Carp, Ph.D., is M. Lyons Chair of American History and associate professor of early American history at Brooklyn College. He authored Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America (Yale, 2010), which won the Cox Book Prize from the Society of the Cincinnati in 2013, and Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution (Oxford, 2007).
Lauren Duval, Ph.D., is assistant professor of history at the University of Oklahoma. She holds a Ph.D. from American University. She is the author of “Mastering Charleston: Property and Patriarchy in British-Occupied Charleston, 1780-82” in the William and Mary Quarterly (2018), which received the journal’s Richard L. Morton Award. (Her related book manuscript is under review.)
Don Hagist is the managing editor of the Journal of the American Revolution (allthingsliberty.com). Mr. Hagist’s areas of interest include the demographics and material culture of the British army in the American Revolution, British operations in Rhode Island and wives of British soldiers. He has published numerous articles in academic journals, as well as books including Noble Volunteers: The British Soldiers Who Fought the American Revolution (Westholme, 2020).
Carin Bloom, Ph.D., is the manager of education and programming at Historic Charleston Foundation in Charleston, South Carolina. She conducted the research for her essay at Middleton Place Foundation, where she was previously the director of engagement. She earned M.A. degrees in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University, specializing in historic sites of conflict archaeology. She participated in and instructed field schools at St. Mary’s City, Maryland, and at Valley Forge National Historical Park.