Catherine Kerrison

Catherine M. Kerrison[1] (born 1953) is an American historian, and professor of history at Villanova University.[2] Her work examines the role and life of American women, with the assistance of primary sources, oral history and written biographies.

Catherine Kerrison
Kerrison at the 2018 National Book Festival
Born (1953-09-30) September 30, 1953
NationalityAmerican
Academic background
Alma materCollege of William & Mary
ThesisBy the Book (1999)
Academic work
DisciplineHistory
Sub-discipline
InstitutionsVillanova University

Life

Kerrison was born on September 30, 1953.[3] She studied American history at the College of William & Mary, earning a Master of Arts degree in 1994 and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1999[4][5] with the thesis By the Book: Advice and Female Behavior in the Eighteenth-Century South.[1] She teaches women's and gender history and focuses on the colonial and revolutionary period of US history. In 2007, she was awarded the Outstanding Book Prize of the History of Education Society for her first book, Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South.[6]

Kerrison is the Academic Director of Gender and Women's Studies of Villanova.[7] In 2012, she was a Virginia Foundation for the Humanities Fellow.[8]

Writing

Kerrison's book, Claiming the Pen (2006),[9] looks at how Anglo-American women in the American South contributed to literature and print in the 18th century.[10][11] In the book, Kerrison demonstrates the types of hierarchies that women in the southern United States faced, including race, class and gender.[10] Kerrison's attention to women writers in the South, who had been largely neglected by historians in favor of New England writers, helps fill a gap in literary studies.[12]

Kerrison used oral history and other forms of literature and writing to examine the intellectual lives of Southern women.[13] Women in the South generally did not have as many advantages as their counterparts in New England, Kerrison argues.[14] However, many of them found outlets through religion, especially after the Great Awakening.[14] Kerrison says that these women tended to consider themselves inferior to the men in their lives and while they wrote, their writing did not assert their independence.[15]

Jefferson's Daughters (2018)[16] was called "an insightful contribution to women's history" by Kirkus Reviews.[17][18] The book follows the story of Thomas Jefferson's three daughters, two born to his white wife, and Harriet Hemings, a mixed-race child born into slavery to Sally Hemings. Harriet was seven-eighths white.[19] Kerrison uses primary sources, oral histories, and other written biographies to reconstruct the three sisters' lives.[20] Kerrison also examines the life of Sally Hemings, Harriet's mother. Her portrait of Jefferson is unflattering.[21][22]

Kerrison has also written about the history of beauty and attraction. Although she has welcomed the increased prominence of women in a variety of industries in the last 30 years, she believes "beauty is being constituted primarily as female", and it is still important for any woman in the public eye.[23] In Jefferson's Daughters, she describes how Jefferson was very invested in preserving and creating beauty for his daughters.[24]

References
  1. Kerrison, Catherine M. (1999). By the Book: Advice and Female Behavior in the Eighteenth-Century South (PhD thesis). Williamsburg, Virginia: College of William & Mary. OCLC 45745306.
  2. "Our Faculty and Staff". Villanova, Pennsylvania: Villanova University. Retrieved August 30, 2018.
  3. Date information sourced from Library of Congress Authorities data, via corresponding WorldCat Identities linked authority file (LAF).
  4. "Catherine Kerrison". Penguin Random House. Retrieved August 30, 2018.
  5. "Catherine Kerrison, Ph.D." Williamsburg, Virginia: College of William & Mary. Retrieved October 24, 2018.
  6. Rojo, Hugo (August 27, 2018). "Practice Shelf-Care with NPR at the National Book Festival". Little Rock, Arkansas: KUAR. NPR. Archived from the original on August 28, 2018. Retrieved September 23, 2018.
  7. Cogliano, Francis D., ed. (2011). A Companion to Thomas Jefferson. New York: John Wiley & Sons. pp. xii–xiii. ISBN 978-1-4443-4460-8.
  8. "Jefferson's Daughters and Revolutionary Thought". Charlottesville, Virginia: Virginia Humanities. Retrieved August 30, 2018.
  9. Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. 2006. ISBN 978-0-8014-4344-2
  10. McMahon, Lucia (2008). "Review of Rhetorical Drag: Gender, Impersonation, Captivity, and the Writing of History, by Lorrayne Carroll, Reading Women: Literacy, Authorship, and Culture in the Atlantic World, 1500–1800, Edited by Heidi Brayman Hackel and Catherine E. Kelly, Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South, by Catherine Kerrison, and Perfecting Friendship: Politics and Affiliation in Early American Literature, by Ivy Schweitzer". Journal of the Early Republic. 28 (4): 674–683. doi:10.1353/jer.0.0036. ISSN 1553-0620. JSTOR 40208141.
  11. Treckel, Paula A. (2007). "Review of Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South, by Catherine Kerrison". Journal of Southern History. 73 (3): 682–683. doi:10.2307/27649496. ISSN 2325-6893. JSTOR 27649496.
  12. Vietto, Angela (2006). "Daughters of the Tenth Muse: New Histories of Women and Writing in Early America". Early American Literature. 41 (3): 555–567. doi:10.1353/eal.2006.0044. ISSN 1534-147X. S2CID 162240604.
  13. Zagarri, Rosemarie (2008). "Review of Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South, by Catherine Kerrison". North Carolina Historical Review. 85 (1): 116–117. ISSN 2334-4458. JSTOR 23523382.
  14. Meacham, Sarah Hand (2006). "Review of Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South, by Catherine Kerrison". Virginia Magazine of History and Biography. 114 (4): 506. ISSN 0042-6636. JSTOR 4250356.
  15. Jabour, Anya (2007). "Review of Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South, by Catherine Kerrison". American Historical Review. 112 (4): 1166. doi:10.1086/ahr.112.4.1166. ISSN 1937-5239. JSTOR 40008488.
  16. Jefferson's Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America. New York: Ballantine Books. 2018. ISBN 978-1-101-88624-3
  17. "Review of Jefferson's Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America, by Catherine Kerrison". Kirkus Reviews. Vol. 85, no. 20. Austin, Texas: Kirkus Media. ISSN 1948-7428. Retrieved November 6, 2018.
  18. Kerrison, Catherine (January 25, 2018). "How Did We Lose a President's Daughter?". The Washington Post. Retrieved November 6, 2018.
  19. Norton, Mary Beth (January 26, 2018). "Jefferson's Three Daughters – Two Free, One Enslaved". The New York Times. Retrieved August 30, 2018.
  20. Jones, Charisse (January 29, 2018). "'Jefferson's Daughters,' Both White and Black, Get Spotlight in New Book". USA Today. McLean, Virginia: Gannett Company. Retrieved August 30, 2018.
  21. Jackson, Buzzy (February 9, 2018). "Bringing Jefferson's Daughters Together". The Boston Globe. Retrieved August 30, 2018.
  22. Gwinn, Mary Ann (January 26, 2018). "'Jefferson's Daughters' Review: Historian Reconstructs Lives of Jefferson's Daughters". Newsday. Melville, New York. Retrieved November 6, 2018.
  23. Spector, Nicole (October 11, 2017). "What Makes Someone 'Most Beautiful' Is Changing, Study Says". NBC News. Retrieved September 23, 2018.
  24. Spindel, Barbara (January 31, 2018). "'Jefferson's Daughters' Tells the Story of Three of Thomas Jefferson's Daughters – White and Black". Christian Science Monitor. ISSN 0882-7729. Retrieved August 30, 2018.
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