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Kathleen S. Murphy

Kathleen S. MurphyAssistant Professor
Colonial America, Atlantic World, History of Science
E-mail: ksmurphy@calpoly.edu
Office: Bldg. 47, Room 27G
Phone: (805) 756-2839

 

EDUCATION

  • Johns Hopkins University, PhD (2007), MA (2003)

  • University of Virginia, BA in History

RESEARCH & TEACHING INTERESTS

My areas of specialization are British Colonial America, the Atlantic World, and the History of Science. Specifically, my research focuses on the history of natural history in the 18th century British Atlantic. I also offer classes in the history of slavery, science & empire, and the era of the American Revolution. Additionally, I co-direct the History Department’s internship program.

Currently I am revising a book manuscript entitled “Nature’s Brokers: Networks of Natural History in Eighteenth-Century British Plantation Societies.” My work examines the wide range of individuals – from slaves to ship captains to planters – involved in the study of the natural world from the Chesapeake to the Caribbean.  By investigating the range of individuals involved in the study of the natural world and their transatlantic exchanges of specimens, seeds, and treatises, I hope to enrich our understanding of both the intellectual life of early America and of the nature of empire.

 

AWARDS, HONORS & PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

  • State Faculty Support Grant (Winter 2009)

  • National Science Foundation Grant, History of Science Society, (November 2007)

  • Donald Worster Grant, American Society for Environmental History Travel Grant (2006)

  • Charles H. Watts Memorial Fellowship, John Carter Brown Library (August-December 2005)

  • Johns Hopkins University Dean’s Teaching Fellowship (2004-2005)

  • Rockefeller Library Fellow, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (June-July 2004)

  • David Library of the American Revolution Resident Fellow (March 2004)

  • Francois Andre Michaux Fund Library Resident Fellow, American Philosophical Society (January-February 2004)

  • Virginia Historical Society Mellon Research Fellowship (December 2003)

  • National Society of Colonial Dames of America, Maryland Chapter, American History Graduate Student Scholarship (2003)

  • Phi Beta Kappa (2001)

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS & PRESENTATIONS

 

Publications:

  • “Translating the Vernacular: Indigenous and African Knowledge in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic,” Atlantic Studies, vol. 8, no. 1 (2011).

  • Review of Kathryn E. Holland Braund and Charlotte M. Porter, eds., Fields of Vision: Essays on the Travels of William Bartram (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, c.2010), Journal of Southern History, forthcoming.

  • Katherine Arner, et al., “The History of Atlantic Science: Notes on an Emerging Discipline,” Atlantic Studies, vol. 7, no. 4 (Dec. 2010).

  • “In Steele’s Footsteps: Review of Rhoden, Nancy L., ed. English Atlantics Revisited: Essays Honouring Ian K. Steele,” H-Atlantic, H-Net Reviews. October 2008. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php.?id=22806

  • “Prodigies and Portents: Providentialism in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 97, no. 4 (Winter 2002).

  • “Judge, Jury, Magistrate & Soldier: Rethinking Law and Authority in late Eighteenth-Century Ireland,” American Journal of Legal History, 44, no. 3 (July 2000).

Presentations:

  • “To Make Florida Answer to Its Name: John Ellis, the Royal Society, and the Cultivation of Empire,” The Royal Society of London’s 350th anniversary conference, “The Royal Society and the British Atlantic,” London, September 30, 2010.

  • “Useful Hints and Vulgar Errors: Vernacular Knowledge and Natural History in Eighteenth-Century British Plantation Societies,” The Atlantic History Seminar, Harvard University, “The Americas in the Advancement of European Science and Medicine, 1500-1830,” August 6, 2009.

  • “Slaving and Collecting: Slave Ship Surgeons and the Pursuit of Natural History,” Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture Fifteenth Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, June 14, 2009

  • “Anonymous Collectors: Slaves, Native Americans, and the Pursuit of Natural History in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic,” Society of Early Americanists Sixth Biennial Conference, Hamilton, Bermuda, March 5, 2009.

  • “Science, Prosperity, and National Advantage: John Ellis and Networks of Natural History in the British Atlantic, 1755-1776,” History of Science Society, November 5, 2007.

  • “‘From the Meanest Things, Useful Hints May Be Gathered’: Vernacular Knowledge in Eighteenth-Century British Natural History,” Folger Institute Colloquium, “Vernacular Health and Healing,” directed by Mary Fissell, March 9, 2007.

  • “’Inundations…which changed the face of Nature’: Virginia’s Great Flood of 1771 and the Politics of Disaster Relief,” American Society for Environmental History, March 31, 2006.

  • “Cultivating Patronage: Networks of Naturalists in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic,” John Carter Brown Library, Providence, Rhode Island, September 7, 2005.             

ORGANIZATIONAL MEMBERSHIPS

  • American Historical Association (AHA)

  • History of Science Society (HSS)

  • Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture (OIEAHC)

  • The History Center of San Luis Obispo County

COURSES