Brooke Orr

Joined Westfield State University in 2003

Education:
Ph.D. History, George Washington University (2002)
B.A. History, Bates College (1994)

Courses Taught:
HIST131: U.S. History to 1865
HIST263: U.S. Women’s History
HIST264: African American History
HIST270: Topics in U.S. History - courses vary by semester:
Sports in American History
U.S. Disability History
U.S. Food & Spirit History
HIST312: U.S. Immigration History
HIST357: U.S. Civil War & Reconstruction

Research Interests:
19th Century U.S. History
American Civil War and Reconstruction
U.S. Women’s History
U.S. Race Relations and Civil Rights Activism
U.S. Social and Political Movements
U.S. Sports History
American Revolution
Antebellum American Cultural History
U.S. Immigration Policy

Selected Publications:

• Book, The “People’s Joan of Arc”: Mary Elizabeth Lease, Gendered Politics and Populist Party Politics in Gilded-Age America (New York: Peter Lang, 2014).
• Review Essay entitled “Crusading Cartoonist: Thomas Nast” featuring Fiona Deans Halloran’s Thomas Nast: The Father of Modern Political Cartoons (University of North Carolina Press, 2013), published in Reviews in American History (June 2014, Volume 42, No. 2): 291-295.
• Book Review, Senda Berenson: The Unlikely Founder of Women’s Basketball by Ralph Melnick, published in the Historical Journal of Massachusetts (Summer 2011): 296-298.
• Review Essay entitled “Populisms of Late Nineteenth-Century America,” published in The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (12:1 January 2013): 127-131.
• Book Review, The Populist Vision (winner of the Bancroft Prize) by Charles Postel, published in The Journal for Southern History, v. 76, n. 3, August 2010: 761-762.
• Book Chapter, “Incorporating Visual Learning in the Social Studies Classroom,” article co-authored with Dr. Signia Warner, published in Elizabeth Heilman, amona Fruja and Matthew Missias, eds. Social Studies Methods and Diversity Teacher Education: What We Do and Why We Do It (New York: Routledge, January 2009).
• Book Review, Man of Douglas, Man of Lincoln: the Political Odyssey of James Henry Lane, by Ian Michael Spurgeon, published in The Indiana Magazine of History v. 105, n. 4 (Dec 2009).
• Book Review, Striking with the Ballot: Ohio Labor and the Populist Party by Michael Pierce, published in The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, v. 107, no. 4, Autumn 2009: 610-612.
• Book Review, Conceiving the Future: Pronatalism, Reproduction, and the Family in the United States, 1890-1938, by Laura L. Lovett, published in The New England Quarterly (March 2008): 140-142.
• Article, “Mary Elizabeth Lease: Gendered Discourse and Populist Party Politics in Gilded Age America,” Kansas History. Volume 29, n. 4. (Winter 2006-2007): 256-265.  Article won the Edgar Langsdorf Award for Excellence in Writing, September 2007.