Welcome to the history core at Boston College!  I’m a Michigander by birth and I earned my B.A. in European history from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 2002.  Currently I’m a 6th-year PhD candidate at Boston College in modern British history.  My dissertation deals with the “great Church Crisis” in the Church of England between 1898 and 1906 and its political and cultural impact.  Although I am a transplant from Michigan, I am a big Red Sox fan.  I also enjoying biking, skating, hiking, and am a cat lover.

I am very excited to be teaching the core at Boston College because I believe it is important for everyone, not just professional historians, to learn to think historically!  One year after having taken the history core at BC you may not remember when the battle of Waterloo took place, but you should still be able to think critically about change over time and look around your environment knowing that everything has meaning.  For example, why does Boston College’s campus look different than Harvard’s?  Why does O’Neill library look different than Gasson Hall?  What message were the planners trying to convey and why?  The core class will help you develop the thinking skills and knowledge necessary to answer questions like these.  Because I am a British historian by training, my core class focuses primarily on Western European history and its interactions with other parts of the globe.  Although we will not neglect political, social, and economic developments, my core examines the past primarily from the perspective of intellectual and cultural history.  This means that we will be exploring the ideas and values of the past.  We will use a wide range of sources to accomplish this, including fiction, non-fiction, art, music, and architecture. 

Please click here to view her web page.