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History Faculty

Dr. Alison Parker

Professor, History Department

Office: 142 Albert W. Brown Building
Phone: 585.395.5689
E-Mail: aparker@brockport.edu

Specialization

• 19th and 20th Century U.S. History

Education

• PhD The Johns Hopkins University, History, 1993.
• MA The Johns Hopkins University, History, 1990. 
• BA University of California, Berkeley, History and the History of Art, Phi Beta Kappa, 1988.

Awards and Honors

• Scholarly Incentive Award, College at Brockport, Spring 2013.
• Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, State university of New York, Spring 2012.
• Provost's Post-Tenure Research Fellowship, College at Brockport, Spring 2012.
• Humanities Project Grant, University of Rochester, for organizing a conference "Gender and Race in American History," Spring 2010.
• NEH Summer Seminar, "Motherhood and the Nation-State in Western Societies Times," Directed by Karen Offen & Marilyn Boxer, Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Stanford University, Summer 2002.

Courses Taught 

• American Women's History & Family History
• American Legal History
• Race and Gender in American History

Publications 

Books:

• Articulating Rights: Nineteenth-Century American Women on Race, Reform, and the State, Northern Illinois University Press, January 2010.  http://www.niupress.niu.edu/niupress/scripts/Book/bookresults.asp?ID=546
• Purifying America: Women, Cultural Reform, and Pro-Censorship Activism, 1873-1933, University of Illinois Press, 1997.

Edited Books:

• Interconnections: Gender and Race in American History, edited by Alison M. Parker & Carol
  Faulkner (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2012).
• Beyond Black and White: Race, Ethnicity and Gender in the U.S. South and Southwest, edited by  Stephanie Cole and Alison M. Parker, Texas A&M University Press, 2004.
• Women and the Unstable State in Nineteenth-Century America, edited by Alison M. Parker and  Stephanie Cole, Texas A&M University Press, 2000.

Book Series Editor:

• Co-editor, with Carol Faulkner (Syracuse University), of a book series, Gender and Race in American History, for the University of Rochester Press, 2008-.

 Articles:

• "'The Picture of Health':  The Public Life and Private Ailments of Mary Church Terrell," in a special issue of the Journal of Historical Biography guest edited by Alison M. Parker, entitled "Disability and Disclosure: The Body, Secrets, and Women's Biography," (Summer 2013).
• "Frances Watkins Harper and the Search for Women’s Interracial Alliances,” in Susan B. Anthony and the Struggle for Equal Rights, edited by Mary Huth and Christine Ridarsky (University of Rochester Press, 2012).
• “Mary Church Terrell’s International Perspective on U.S. Race Relations,” peer-reviewed article with a fully transcribed Primary Source Document Project for the “Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000" website, edited by Kathryn Kish Sklar and Thomas Dublin (Alexander Street Press, Spring 2012).
• Review Essay, “Reading Race Through U.S. Women’s Biographies,” in the Journal of Women’s History (Autumn, 2012 V. 24, Issue 3).
• Review Essay, “The Alcotts and the Wilders: Revealing Family Histories,” for Reviews in American History (December 2010).
• "Clubwomen, Reformers, Workers, and Feminists of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era," in Women's Rights in the Age of Suffrage: People and Perspectives, edited by Crista DeLuzio (New York: ABC-CLIO, 2009).
• The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848: A Pivotal Moment in Nineteenth-Century America." Review essay of Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Rights Movement , by Sally McMillen, for Reviews in American History (Sept. 2008).
• "Women Activists and the US Congress, 1870s-1920s," in The American Congress: Building of Democacy, edited by Julian Zelizer, (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004).
• "Women's Rights and 'Speech Communities' in American Legal History," Review essay of Sandra Van Burkleo, Belonging to the World: Women's Rights and American Constitutional Culture, in Reviews in American History, Vol. 31, N.1 (March 2003).
• "The Case for Reform Antecedents to the Woman Suffrage Movement," in
  Votes for Women: A  Concise History of the Suffrage Movement, Oxford University Press, 2002.
• "'What We Do Expect the People Legislatively to Effect': Frances Wright, Moral Reform, and  State Legislation" in Women and the Unstable State in Nineteenth-Century America, edited by Alison M. Parker and Stephanie Cole, Texas A&M University Press, 2000.
• "'Hearts Uplifted and Minds Refreshed': The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the  Production of Pure Culture," in Journal of Women’s History, Summer 1999.
• "Mothering the Movies: Women Reformers and the Censorship of Popular Culture," in Movie Censorship and American Culture, edited by Francis Couvares, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996.

Conferences and Presentations 

• Invited Talk, “Susan B. Anthony: Debates about Birth Control and Abortion in the Late 19^th Century,” Susan B. Anthony Lecture Series, Susan B. Anthony House, May 2013.
•  Invited Talk, “The International Activism of Mary Church Terrell,” National University of Ireland, Maynooth, March 2013. 
• “Gilded Age Legal Culture and Race Relations,” Roundtable Discussion on “Rethinking The Long Gilded Age” at the American Historical Association, January 2013.
• Invited Talk, “Interconnections: Race and Gender in American History,” Goucher College, October 2012.
• “Mary Church Terrell: Disability and Disclosure,” Society for Disability Studies Conference, Denver, Colorado, June 2012.
• Invited Talk: "Disability and Disclosure: The Public Life & Private Ailments of Mary Church Terrell," Johns Hopkins University, Spring 2012.
• Presenter & Organizer: "'The Picture of Health': Mary Church Terrell's Privatizing of Her Body's Problems," for a Workshop: "The Body and Biography: Feminist Biographers and the Problem of Disclosure,: at the Berkshire Conference on Women's History, June 2011.
• "Gender and Citizenship" Roundtable Participant at the Organization of American Historians, March 2011.
• “Women and Electoral Politics in the Long 1920s: Race, Gender, and Political Culture," Chair, American Historical Association, January 2011.
• “Possibilities and Limits of Biography in Comparative Perspective,” Roundtable Participant, American Historical Association, January 2010.
• "Breaking Boundaries: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Politics," Roundtable Participant, Organization of American Historians, March 2009.
• "Re-Envisioning Mary Church Terrell: From Self-Help to a Critique of 'White Lawlessness,'" Seminar on Women’s Biographies, led by Judith Zinsser, Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Summer 2008.
• "Frances Watkins Harper: Anti-Slavery, Public Advocacy, and 'Christian Affiliation' in the United States," American Historical Association, January 2008.
• "Justice is Not Fulfilled So Long as Woman is Unequal Before the Law: Women's Rights, Race and Activism in the Writings of Frances Watkins Harper," Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Summer 2005.
• "Sarah Grimke's Theory of Women's Political Co-Equality," Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR), Summer 2002.
•  “Culture Wars and Censorship,” Organization of American Historians, April, 2000.

Current Project

• I am (slowly!) researching and writing a biography on Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954), the first president of the National Association of Colored Women and a co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Last Updated 5/13/13

News

Dr. Ken O'Brien has been named a SUNY Provost Fellow for the 2013-2014 year.

Dr. Bruce Leslie has been made a SUNY Distinguished Service Professor.

Dr. Morag Martin receives SUNY Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence.

History students win campus-wide awards for 2012-13 year!

Three History students present at the NCUR.

Events

Department Graduation Ceremony, May 18, 10:30 am in the New York Room, Cooper Hall