Bookmakers & Land-takers
The Making of a Gold Rush Daughter
The Making of a Gold Rush Daughter
In a new project, Bookmakers & Land-takers, I examine the persistence of colonial imaginaries and print culture livelihoods across five generations of an American family. Tethered on one end to colonial Philadelphia, the War for Independence, and the literary industries in Cooperstown and Boston, it is anchored on the other to the California gold rush, San Francisco book worlds, and Mountain Maidu Country. A multi-generational narrative, Bookmakers & Land-takers culminates in the life and literary work of one of the first women to graduate from the University of California.
Upcoming Presentations
UC's First Female Graduates (1874-1878): 1889 Reunion at Big Meadows, California (Western History Conference, Portland, October 2026).
Christlieb Bartling (1746-1828) and American Settler Placemaking (SHEAR, Philadelphia, July 2026).
Past
Oakland High School in the 1870s: Cultivating the Literary Lives of Future UC Graduates Clara Bartling '78 and Milicent Shinn '80, '98 (Western Association of Women Historians, 2026).
Expressions of American Belonging in the Work of Boston Antiquarian Abel Bowen, 1790-1850 (Shattuck Colonial American History Symposium, 2026).
From the British Mid-Atlantic to Gold Rush California: Intergenerational Continuities and Transformations in a Settler-Colonial Family's Ambitions and Identity (Western History Conference, 2024).
The "Last Mountain Maidu Medicine Man": Literary Expressions of Settler Colonialism (Southwestern Anthropological Association, 2024).
A Gold Rush Bookbinder's Daughter Among the Mountain Maidu: Firsting and Lasting in Northern California (Western History Conference, 2023).
Tracing Colonial Sensibilities Across Generations, Continents, and High Seas (Shattuck Colonial American History Symposium, 2022).